


Gravity

by notenuffcaffeine



Series: Adaptations [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, John Sheppard is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Missions Gone Wrong, OC Character Death, Pre-Relationship, Prequel, Prison camp, Protective Team, Rodney McKay is Confused, SGA: canon pet name, Sentinel/Guide, Whump, here have some feels nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24768361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: After letting Rodney risk their lives trying to fix the doomed Arcturus project, John realizes he has created a security threat of his own, and has to try to figure out how to stay friends with McKay without compromising their lives. Or telling Rodney.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, references McKay/Brown
Series: Adaptations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768660
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ________________________________________________
> 
> An SGA prologue to Drafted. Basically the Writing Muses got mad that this stuff was glossed over instead of included properly, so it had to be written out instead of simply written-in-my-head and referenced.
> 
> It shows *some* of how the AU changes the canon order to meet up with how things go down in Drafted. This references and plays with the canon timeline of events from multiple episodes directly:  
> S2e4 - Duet  
> S2e6 - Trinity  
> s2e7&8 - Instinct, Conversion  
> S2e9 - Aurora  
> s2e10&11 - Lost boys, The Hive  
> S2e13 - Critical Mass  
> S4e13 - Quarantine
> 
> (So it's slightly spoilery, except the order of events is messed with and the contexts are not canon, so Not Really...)  
> __________________________

The wild panic on Rodney McKay's face burned into John's mind. The scientist could handle anything the universe wanted to throw at him. Except this, and John Sheppard saw it for the first time in the keen blue eyes that suddenly looked so lost.

"I can't shut it down."

Rodney McKay admitted failure in an impossible situation of his own damn making that was incredibly life-threatening. As in, immediately threatening his own life _and_ John's. Barely minutes after promising not to let him down, Rodney had failed. Hard. And he knew it.

It wasn’t _all_ on Rodney. Some part of John had known he was risking his neck when Rodney showed up to get him in his corner on it. When the Arcturus went into overload on them the first time, Rodney hadn't just lost a member of his own team, he had _killed_ him, and John had seen it on his face every day since. Rodney wanted to make it worth it, and even for Rodney, the bullshit about the Nobel was just set-dressing because nobody would listen to anything else from him. _This_ wasn’t for a Nobel. And it had gone well past what McKay had the capacity to deal with, on any level.

The weapon going off somewhere over the complex offered not-so-eloquent punctuation of Rodney’s words as he talked himself through the losing battle with the Ancients' failed technology. John recognized enough of it to know he was standing on the goddamned Death Star and she was about to blow.

When one of the consoles exploded, John flinched and reached for Rodney as he recovered. "Alright, _that's_ it. We're outta here."

McKay jerked away from his effort. "What did I _just_ say! The weapon's firing at _random_ targets _above_ the planet. _This_ is the safest place to be right now."

Sheppard shoved into his shoulder to try to get the scientist's stubborn attention back. "The place isn't gonna be safe for very much longer!"

Rodney shook his head. He wasn't looking at John, not because he couldn't take his eyes off the screens, but because he was avoiding. It was that thing Rodney did when he was scared, when he fucked up, when he couldn't keep up with his own damned ego. "No, I can bring it back under control! Just give me a second-"

"No, you _can't_ , Rodney!" said Sheppard. He stalked around the console to grab for Rodney again. McKay rolled his shoulder and twisted, but John didn't let go. They locked up for a second, staring each other down. John blinked first. "Come on, we're out."

Rodney pulled himself free and turned back to his laptop. "Just _one_ second!"

Sheppard rounded the edge of the console to put himself as much in the way as he could, staring Rodney down over the top of his laptop screen.

"I've seen this before, Rodney. Pilots who wouldn't eject when something went wrong, trying to fix their planes. Fighting with the damn thing-" Sheppard reached out and smacked the console in front of Rodney to try to get through to him. " _Right_ until it hit the _ground_."

_Something_ worked because Rodney looked up at him. The lost expression hadn't faded, just added a new layer of fear.

"We need to leave. I've waited too long... the weapon can't discharge enough power to avoid a catastrophic overload. This whole planet's gonna go up," he rambled out, shutting the laptop and disconnecting the things he could in the seconds he felt he could waste. John caught his arm and followed him to the ladder. He near tripped on him when Rodney stopped to look back at him. "Not that your speech wasn't working-"

"Rodney!" John growled at him and the scientist finally started to climb out of the lab.

*~*~*

If it weren't for the Daedalus, they would have been dead. Instead, John and Rodney had just created a debris field out of an entire _solar system_ and lost god-knew-what kind of civilizations and culture and information and life in general. The official report was that the solar system was uninhabited before it went up, but John cast a side-eye at convenient numbers like that considering the Ancients had set up a 'gate there.

Which, of course, meant they had _also_ lost a _'gate_. Sheppard noted that Caldwell had mentioned that prominently in his report back to the SGC.

Lt. Colonel John Sheppard was lucky he still had a job after the Arcturus disaster. Caldwell and Weir had lectured him for a half an hour between the both of them. And the only wiggle room John had on it was that it was in the military's interests that he had petitioned for the chance in the first place. Sure, they had blown it up, but in blowing it up, they came to the undeniable conclusion that the weapon was too flawed to function.

Really, for all it was a spectacular failure, it had saved the expedition another few months of work chasing bad ideas. They had already lost one scientist to the weapon, so it was their job now to think of the dozens of lives they had saved by shutting her down early.

It was a loophole, and John was clinging to it to save his tiny silver oak leaf pins. He still hadn't gotten to show them off to his dad, and he didn't want to lose the opportunity for a fancy, dress-blues, gloating dinner with the family somewhere before it even presented itself.

All the same, Rodney had screwed up. At the end of the day, the guy had pulled in a favor, on their friendship, and John had trusted him. The stupid thing was that John always trusted him, without being asked, but Rodney had to go and _ask him to_ , and that _had_ to be some kind of cheating. Rodney was on AR-1 because John trusted him and his stupid genius brain. They were friends outside of the team, went and did actual friends-stuff, because John trusted him.

Rodney had stood right there in John's apartment and lied his little heart out.

He hadn't known what would happen. He had _wanted_ to know what would happen, but Rodney's numbers weren't locked in, he didn't have his usual ten extra backup plans, nothing was _actually_ ready when Rodney asked him, on the trust of their friendship, to try Arcturus again. Rodney had been stubborn, impulsive, and not in his right mind.

Maybe it was grief, maybe it was shock. John had seen both on his face since the first accident cost McKay a member of his team. Crispy-fried scientist wasn't something Rodney had been prepared to witness, let alone be responsible for.

He showed up to negotiate, like he could wipe the slate clean if he got the system working. And John had fallen for it, and they had nearly been killed for it.

As his friend, that hurt, but John could get over it. He was strangely okay with Rodney screwing up and killing them both someday. Truth be told, he was more or less resigned to that being how fate would play them out. Bitching at each other to the last, but side by side on the way.

As Rodney's team-lead, though, it wasn’t allowed to hurt. It got a pass or fail grade, and had to be held up against the safety of the whole team. As team-lead, as military commander of the expedition, risking himself and the chief science officer on the expedition, created a whole situation rife with logic fail and lapse in judgement that could not be risked again. That wasn't Rodney’s fault. That was on John.

John had to sort himself out on that, too. He had gotten too close to someone on his team. He had let it compromise them both. And all it took was Rodney showing up at his door - something he did fairly often, before they would head out to the lower levels to explore, or the cafeteria, or the piers - and asking for some trust. He already had it, so John's only hang-up on saying _yes_ was the impossibility that awaited him trying to convince Director Weir and Colonel Caldwell. There was a pull there, gravitational, and it dragged him in to find a fix. He saw grief on his friend's face and wanted to find a way around it, and instead jeopardized the security of his team, and Atlantis.

He didn't like the conclusion when he came to it, either, which proved it was true. Sheppard was too close to McKay if he wanted to do his job right. That hurt a bit. He was going to have to try Rodney's avoiding technique, make sure he could get around dealing with Rodney outside of team-stuff. Throw some cold water on that one until John could trust himself to read the guy right again.

It just sucked. He didn't want to, damnit.

John was surly for a few days after they got back and he knew it, but he couldn’t make his head line up with his gut on it. So he stayed busy and he stayed hard to find. Elizabeth knew where to find him, and his team leads could track him down, but he avoided his usual routines. Carson Beckett happened to find him, checking in for food a few hours late for lunch and a few hours early for the dinner crowd.

"Colonel! There ye are, been wondering," the doctor greeted. John managed a smile and carried on toward grabbing a sandwich. It was no surprise when Carson moved with him to the line.

"Afternoon, Doc," he replied.

"That it is, and a good one so far," said Carson. "That cheerful lass Sandy found a missing pallet of supplies, somewhere around the back end of Nowhere I hear, as part of your latest inventory. Thanks for being so thorough."

"Sandy? D'you mean Taylor?" John asked, surprised.

"Aye, that's her," replied Carson. Sheppard let out a dry laugh.

"Don't let her hear you call her a cheerful lass. She'll cheerfully kick your ass," said John, shaking his head. "Her and Cadman get together a lot. She makes Cadman seem harmless."

Carson frowned at him. "Laura is perfectly harmless."

Rather than overthink their very different reads on his security teams, Sheppard just nodded and stacked more food on his plate.

"Speaking of harmless," said the ever chatty Carson, "Rodney’s under the impression you're avoiding him."

"Why-ever would I be avoiding the man who tried to blow me up in the remaining one-sixth of a solar system he hadn't already doomed," replied John, no heat and all sarcasm. It hurt a little, but it wasn't a complete lie.

"That's hardly fair, John," chided Carson. Sheppard scouted a table and headed for it, resigned to the interrogation following him. Carson slid into the chair across from him and carried on without fail. "You are friends, after all. And I dare say the man doesn't have enough of those not to notice."

"What’s a little planet-killing between friends, huh, doc?" John asked. Carson pointed a fork at him.

"I know you've done just as badly," said Carson. "It's the Wild West out here. And you lot are the ones with the six-shooters."

"Strangely enough, McKay was packing a little more firepower than that," replied Sheppard. But he nodded anyway. "It's been busy. I'm sure we'll catch up eventually."

John just wasn't in a hurry for it. AR-1 would be coming up on the rotation soon enough, and Sheppard would have to be back on his Lt. Colonel priorities by the time that happened. Shove the John Sheppard ones back in the box. It just was taking him a minute, was all. And he certainly knew better than to share that caveat with their chatty friend Carson.

*~*~*

Carson had jinxed him, because later that day, John's routine accidentally synced up with Rodney’s again, even just for a minute. Crossing paths was all it took. Rodney locked on and John was suddenly having to figure out how an asshole military team leader was supposed to deal with things. He had been stalling on that because every time he tried to sort it, he went back to the court-martial. Back to a judge and jury of ranking officers breathing down his neck for disobeying orders and costing them a helicopter and wasting the resources of an extraction team.

If he looked at it in the wrong light, the instances were remarkably similar. But between him and Rodney, they had both gotten home this time.

The fact of it was, accidents happened, doing what they did. People died. But Rodney's choices had compromised the team and John had allowed it. There had to be pushback. There had to be consequences. And Rodney had to know he could never do that again. And John had to tell him that. Which, of course, meant he couldn't keep hiding.

Shit.

"Colonel! I've been looking all over for you," said Rodney

Rodney had spotted him, so there was no sense in running like a coward. So John stopped and turned, steeled his backbone with a deep breath, and crossed his arms against whatever was headed his way.

"I heard," he said, frustrated. Rodney shuffled awkwardly and nodded, looking away briefly.

"I suppose I deserve that. Look, I just- I wanted to apologize about what happened. I was wrong. About Arcturus, about the overloads... I mean, the math was there, but..." Rodney broke off the ramble and started over. "I'm sorry. And I wanted to assure you that, uh, I intend to go back to being right again. About _everything_ , effective immediately."

Rodney broke off on one of his hopeful smiles, and John tried to smile back, but he saw it didn't land right. Rodney was scared, and admitting it wasn't his favorite thing, and genuine, non-Canadian apologies were hardly even in the man's vocabulary, yet here they were. John knew Rodney was an egotistical jerk sometimes, and it hadn't ever bothered him. Egotistical jerks who let him shoot them in the name of science were strangely just fine in his book. And while it was slightly gratifying and validating to watch Rodney fall on his sword about something, John still felt himself wanting to fix it for his friend, and he couldn't.

"That was a joke..." Rodney clarified quickly.

Taking that as a missed cue, John pasted on another distracted, flat smile and nodded. "Good one."

Apology accepted, John wanted to remove himself from the confused mess of responsibilities raging between his ears. Maybe it was a headache, but he was used to blaming those on Rodney now. With another nod, John turned and walked into the transport room he had strategically retreated toward earlier. Rodney jumped forward, to catch him from leaving or to follow him, John wasn't sure. Not wanting to share the lift just then, John turned to face him again, arms crossed bullishly.

"I've already apologized to Elizabeth. And to Radek. And I thanked Colonel Caldwell for, uh, well, caring enough to spy on the experiment from orbit. I sent him a nice little email, actually," said Rodney, and he was probably a little proud of himself for accomplishing such a social nicety. "But I saved you ‘til last ‘cause... Honestly, I would- I would hate to think that recent events might have permanently dimmed your faith in my abilities, or your trust. At the very least, I hope I can earn that back."

Sheppard stared at him, reminding himself he couldn't deal with his friend just then. Reminding himself of the court-martial he had narrowly avoided this time thanks to good, old-fashioned practicality, and the fact that he had Caldwell dead to rights on the fact that the military wanted the weapon to work as bad as Rodney had. But a guy didn't capital-D _Destroy_ a solar system every day, either.

"That may take me a while," John said finally. The hope on Rodney’s face fell away and what was left was grief again. _Shitcrapfuck_. John crossed his arms again and shuffled on his feet. Then he reached toward the controls on the wall behind him.

"I see," was all Rodney said. And John hoped to hell he didn't.

"But, I'm sure you can figure it out, if you really wanna try," he said, not even sure what he was saying, other than words to try to fix what broke. Rodney smiled at him again, and John caught himself smiling back as the door closed. When they opened again, John sagged back against the wall and breathed for a second. That sucked. He was almost mad at Rodney just for making him do it.

Then Sheppard looked up, back at the halls outside the small closet of a room. He could figure it out himself. The hard part had been done. Now he just had to make himself stick to it.

*~*~*

"Look, say what you want, but she was acting suspicious," said Rodney. John rolled his eyes.

"Oh, yes, Rodney, obviously. Carson's girlfriend is clearly the most suspicious person in the city," said Colonel Sheppard. The man shook his head, almost close to laughing. "Come on. Use your brain. Carson's too much of a... a... _busybody_. He would not be dating someone with any kind of _nefarious intent_."

"Hmm. Last I knew, most men choose their dates with their _little_ brain, not the one that actually worked," said Rodney, dismissive. "I don't care what kind of gossipy, bedside-manner voodoo superpowers you think the man's got, they wouldn't work on someone he's dating."

Sheppard blinked like Rodney had somehow just shorted out the hamster-wheel in his head. It took him a minute of hedging before he shrugged and nodded. "Okay, that may be a valid point."

"Ha!" Rodney replied. "Besides, you’re still just sore it wasn't Kavanagh."

John shook his head, resolved. "Kavanagh's off the table. When he gets back to the SGC, he'll bring up an inquiry on Elizabeth. Can't talk about him."

Rodney sobered quickly. "Damn, really?"

"Probably." John shrugged. "He fainted, but when he woke up he was ranting about alien guard dogs. I _might_ have barked at him just to shut him up."

That actually wasn't as surprising as it probably should have been. Rodney nodded his acceptance of it as the door out to the pier slid open well ahead of them. When no one walked through the door to explain it, Rodney worried for a moment that the sensors were faulty, but then he saw the grin on Sheppard’s face.

"Show off," he grumbled. John just smiled.

"It's fun. I'll take my happy where I can get it," he said.

The pair of them moved out to their usual spot, on the edge of the pier formed by one snowflake shaped wing of the city-ship. It felt solid as rock, no different than sitting on the edge of a cliff side back on Earth, or any other planet. Rock was rock. Some were just prettier than others, and the surface of the piers was like a dark granite, with flecks of silver hidden in the grain. It was a bitch to fight with the exterior panels of the city for repairs, but just to sit, to just live there, it was comfortable and awesome.

Rodney dug in on his paper-sack dinner as he settled in to watch the horizon. They were both on orders for short days for the time being after the last week of emergencies and crisis trying to keep the city from destroying them all. Funny how an alien parasite could screw up... everything.

"You know, maybe it's lucky it was Caldwell. Maybe I can start fighting back when he starts twisting the knife on me," said Sheppard. "It would be nice to get some traction back with the SGC."

Rodney frowned at that. He was temporarily distracted by a bite of sandwich, but when it was possible to talk again, he asked, "Huh?"

John shrugged and looked down at his little paper tray of chips. "Caldwell wanted my command and Weir wouldn't let him have it. So he's... is there a _polite_ way to make someone's life hell? Because he figured out how to do it. He relays everything back to the SGC for us, so he can offer his two-cents, and he has to sign off on everything. I’m living under a microscope. So maybe, after they sort out this Goa'uld-thing, maybe he'll back off."

"That's assuming he gets to keep his command when he gets back," Rodney pointed out. "They'll be reading your report, and Elizabeth's this time. On him."

John nodded, looking out at the sunset with a squint. "Yep."

"Did you do it back? Twist the knife, as you so artfully put it," asked Rodney. John scoffed and made a face before shaking his head.

"Nope."

"Well. Good, then," said Rodney. He took another bite as he considered it. They both sat in companionable quiet for a moment. Then Rodney wondered how much reading John had really done on the Milky Way aliens they usually didn't have to worry about. "You do know, don't you, that it's entirely likely it was the Goa'uld who wanted your post. Not Caldwell."

John's slouch disappeared and he tilted his head, looking up out over the water. His face said _oh shit_ , but his mouth stayed quiet.

"It's probably a good thing you didn't screw him over in your report," said Rodney. "We haven't even met Caldwell, for all we know."

"Oh." John still thought it over.

Rodney checked to make sure his friend didn't suddenly jump down into the water twenty feet down, but otherwise went quiet to finish his food. He still tried not to press Sheppard, was still feeling like he had to stay back if he wanted to keep his friend. It had been less than two weeks since he had nearly lost them their jobs. This was their first trip back out to the pier since the explosion on Arcturus, and there had been little time for anything else really since. But John hadn't been able to avoid him as they went from crisis to crisis, putting out fires from security politics to technological heart attacks, so the pain of _loss_ wasn't there anymore for Rodney. Now it was just a fear of it coming back that kept him quiet.

"Hey, since Elizabeth said we can't go back to work tonight, short of Wraith, we could try the new motors on the RCs," Rodney realized as he finished his chips. Sheppard glanced over at him before frowning down at the water.

"Probably not. You need sleep. And I'm behind on paperwork," said John. The man clearly hadn't been listening. Or he had and he just wasn’t processing at his usual level. But rather than point out that Elizabeth had specifically told Sheppard no working for twelve hours, minimum, Rodney just nodded. _No RC races for a while. Got it._

*~*~*

They dropped right back into crisis mode a week after the Daedalus left to head back for the Milky Way with their Goa'uld-free Caldwell-cargo. A simple off-world trip for AR-1 turned into a Wraith hunt and the team ended up back in the infirmary again. Sheppard took the worst of it, getting fed on by a teenaged Wraith and simultaneously exposed to the toxic retrovirus and the enzyme that had already caused everyone trouble. Sheppard’s new version of the trouble entailed turning gray and scaly as he became a human Wraith-Bug. McKay expected to be stuck with nightmares about human bugs for the rest of his life, assuming of course that any of them managed to survive very much longer in Pegasus.

For a few days, Sheppard wasn't even human anymore, just blue-green scales, yellow eyes, and open wounds that wouldn’t heal. The cure Carson eventually hobbled together was worse than poison for a solid twenty-four hours, causing obvious pain to the point of seizures. John had to be locked up in the cells below the city, had to burn it out of his system cold-turkey in the actual cold because the iratus DNA had progressed so far that they weren’t sure if he could come back from it. But he did. It took days for Sheppard’s face to even _start_ to return to normal after the fiasco with the retrovirus. He was on leave for a couple of weeks, and Lorne took over for him, since the only other ranking military officer was likewise compromised by aliens and had already left on the Daedalus.

It changed John’s schedule, obviously, but he showed up to remind Rodney to take a lunch break, at least every few days once he was better. Decked out in jeans and button down, loose shirts, as far from his uniform as he could get, because Elizabeth had threatened to confine him to quarters if he tried to sneak back to work. It was kind of bizarre.

Sheppard was mostly cranky, Rodney noticed, and John blamed it on the boredom of not being allowed to work. So Rodney made it a point to find out what the Lt. Colonel was missing, not spying on his temporary replacement or anything out of line, but snooping on the scuttlebutt. If Carson could do it, Rodney could do it. And he passed it along to Sheppard whenever he saw him. The news updates seemed to go over well, but Sheppard seemed to have forgotten how to smile.

Eventually Sheppard went back to work, back to the uniform. He kept the quieter tone of voice, kept the gruff greetings. They kept the lunch time chats and the occasional chess game, but their once-usual, accidentally-coordinated dinner schedules didn’t happen, except when Rodney stumbled into coordinating it with Ronon and Teyla. The team, all of them together, would still do things, but John had dropped back.

Rodney noticed it most strongly when they went off-world to scout an area Teyla thought had been culled years ago. It was just a check, on the off chance the culture had rallied and recovered. It paid off in the end, and after an hour’s walk from the ‘gate, they stumbled onto a small village, populated by faces Teyla knew, who recognized her on sight.

There was a celebration on the spot, and Sheppard wanted to radio Weir to let her know they would be setting camp and seeing what could be set up between Teyla’s friends and Atlantis to help. Rodney walked back to the ‘gate with John, and he was almost himself for the two mile hike. Almost. He poked at Rodney to make him talk, even smiled again. Taunted Rodney when the ‘gate hiccuped and stuttered before the dialing sequence completed. Crystals that hadn’t been used in too long were probably frying and Rodney started worrying about how to make sure they got home. But the event horizon lit up and the wormhole held.

“Too long since you’ve been out in the field,” said John. “You’re getting rusty. It’s just a DHD, Rodney.”

McKay harrumphed at him for it and stayed quiet because Sheppard was already on the radio with Elizabeth, relaying the news that they were camping for at least twelve hours and would check in again when it was daylight.

“Be careful, Colonel. We’ll talk to you in the morning,” said Weir. “Atlantis out.”

And they shut down the gate and walked back, shoulder to shoulder instead of Rodney chasing after John, or the Colonel dropping back to “check something.” It was weird that Rodney hadn’t noticed the differences until the normal he had once been used to had come back for a few hours.

Sheppard got absolutely shitfaced drunk that night, too caught up in the genuine joy of people glad to be alive, glad to have news that old friends had survived, glad to make new friends. Teyla assured Rodney it was okay, as even she had been drinking her friends’ honeyed mead. Rodney kept to his flask of water, content with the food that was brought out as a feast.

Hard drinks or not, Teyla and the others traded stories, and none of them had anything to do with the Wraith for once. All good news, all marriages and births and bountiful harvests, the fresh perspectives the people had found when they were starting over. There was music, a few people with hand-crafted instruments who seemed to know what they were doing.

When a few of Teyla’s friends wanted to be dancing, she and John and Ronon stood up to figure out how to not look like drunken idiots moving to dances they had never been taught. John walked over to where Rodney sat and bumped him on the shoulder with his knee.

“McKay, come on,” John said. He didn’t sound too drunk, and Rodney looked up to see him waving a hand to beckon him over. Rodney shook his head quickly.

“These two left feet keep still,” Rodney replied quickly.

“Liar,” John said, sounding amused. He moved around to stand between Rodney and the fire, looking down at him for a minute. Rodney stared up at him, openly confused.

“What?” he asked. John dropped down to crouch, elbows on his knees as he met Rodney eye to eye.

“Your file. Your name’s not even Rodney,” Sheppard said. McKay felt completely blindsided by that.

“Yes it is...” he stammered lamely. Sheppard’s bushy eyebrow quirked up on one side.

“Oh really?” he challenged. Rodney frowned at him and nodded. “Fine. What’s your family call you by then? Your sister. You said you got a sister. _She_ calls you _McKay_ then?”

“No, she... well, she calls me Mer, but _my name_ is _Rodney_. That’s what they _call me by_ ,” replied Rodney. “Colonel, where the hell-”

But the Colonel was smiling at him, watching him. Despite the weird, surreal moment Rodney found himself in, Sheppard was just relaxed and some kind of happy. “Mer?”

Rodney blinked at him. “It’s a pet-name.”

John nodded once. “For _Meredith_.”

“What- _Stay out_ of my file!” Rodney hissed at him. Sheppard just smiled at him, leaned forward a little.

“Come over there with the rest of us, Mer,” he tried again. He was trying the name on, not taunting with it, and Rodney could have liked it. But the mission had him feeling off-kilter. Things were going right when everything in him said something was wrong, and McKay couldn’t get his brain and reality to quite line up. John using his nickname wasn’t offensive, but it... wasn't helping. Rodney shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he said. Sheppard shrugged it off but the smile faded to that mask he used around new people. Then he stood and stepped by him again. He flicked Rodney on the side of the head and then disappeared among the others who apparently knew how to have fun at parties. Rodney blinked at the fire pit in front of him.

It was a party, in the open air, surrounded by a village with a sturdy fence and sturdy houses nothing like what the Athosians made. Cement and rock and plaster, rather than clay and thatch and logs. They were industrially developed a little further along, and for Rodney that amounted to security, so he allowed it. He kept an eye on his team, and sat it out. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn’t ask anyone about it, either. It was tiring.

When McKay turned in, the others were still going, though Ronon seemed remarkably clear eyed. He had been drinking something, but the effective alcohol content wasn’t as strong, maybe it was only a beer. Or maybe he was keeping watch the same way Rodney was. Either way, when McKay stood up to go find a place to sleep, Ronon looked up at him and nodded. If he hadn’t been keeping a lookout before, he was upon Rodney’s exit, because he tossed what was left of his drink into the fire pit.

Rodney looked around for John and Teyla, spotted Teyla near one of the other fire pits, laughing with her friends. John... looked like he was trying to teach another couple of inebriated folk how to play hacky-sack with some kind of clay-clods or something. They were safe. It was... odd. Since when did _that_ happen lately? But McKay accepted it and went into the meeting house where they had been told they could stay the night. Their things were still there, so Rodney set out his sleeping bag and... slept. It wasn’t terrible. It was a wood floor and a sleeping bag, with his pack and jacket for a pillow, absolutely miserable for his back, but he slept.

Sometime in the night, the others showed up, in the dark as the fires had been put out in the village square. McKay was stirred awake as John flopped out his sleeping bag at Rodney’s shoulder. They had the entire room to just the four of them, and Sheppard sprawled into McKay’s space bubble instead. He yawned and was asleep in minutes. Rodney grumbled about being woken up but he was back to sleep soon after, too.

The next morning, John hid behind his sunglasses and wasn’t moving so swift, and Rodney couldn’t help but laugh at him. “This. _See_! This is why _I_ don’t drink at these things,” he said.

Sheppard scowled at him for it but didn’t have any witty comebacks to the logic. He stayed quiet all morning, taking the back seat as Teyla arranged the necessaries with her friends to set up a mutually beneficial trade deal between her once-forgotten Molanbe friends and Atlantis. They came away with the promise of grain and vegetables, in exchange for monthly visits from the medical team. And the promise of a return trip soon, with Teyla and the Athosians, for another bonfire celebration.

They walked back to the gate with Ronon and Sheppard as pack animals, carrying massive baskets of fresh vegetables. Nothing at all went wrong, the entire mission. After the last month of one emergency after another, Rodney still felt stupid for being surprised. Weir was proud of them, and the mess offered fresh salad again for a few days.

Huh.

*~*~*


	2. Chapter 2

Nine weeks out from the fuckup at Arcturus (and eight from Rodney’s apology) and John still didn't trust him. What was worse was that the Colonel was admitting it out loud, in front of the whole team. He questioned Rodney’s science and said he didn't trust him, and McKay wasn't sure which hurt worse in that moment.

"What’s the matter, Colonel? Don't you trust me?" Rodney hadn't even been thinking when he shot back with the tease.

"No."

It was just right there, plain as day, and a little angry just for color. Rodney wasn’t expecting miracles, but he hadn't been expecting personal attacks, either.

But he wasn't there to win brownie points with the Colonel, anyway, and in this particular situation it didn't matter if Sheppard trusted him, because Rodney’s math and computer skills were not being used on anything the Colonel had to even touch. He and his untrustworthy Ancient knowledge were hacking into the stasis lifepods on the Ancient ship _the Aurora_ , trying to communicate with the last remaining Ancients the Atlantis expedition might ever meet. And the recently returned, Goa'uld-free _Colonel_ Stephen Caldwell still valued McKay's expertise.

"I should be able to tap into the neural network without actually initializing stasis. Look, it won't take long. I'll be in and out," Rodney told the Daedalus' commander over the radio. John lurked over Rodney’s shoulder, snooping, frowning, and completely unconvinced. He crossed his arms and scratched at his jaw. The universal Sheppard signal for _I don't like it_. Rodney sighed, rolled his eyes, and tried again.

"Look, the quickest way to figure out what is going on in there is to tap into the system and communicate directly with the Captain. Need I remind you of the obvious value in this?" he asked. They could be talking to Ancients instead of arguing with each other. Real, live, (for the moment, anyway) Ancients.

"But is it safe?" Teyla asked. Rodney scoffed at the ridiculous question.

"Would _I_ be volunteering to go if it wasn't?"

Ronon, with his superb grasp of the obvious, replied with a decisive " _No_." Rodney nodded and pointed toward the man's reply.

"Which is exactly what makes it safe enough for me to go," said Sheppard, rather sudden. What happened to the Sheppard who didn't trust McKay a minute earlier?

"What?" Rodney asked, blinking up at him stupidly. John patted him on the shoulder and moved around to the other side of the pod, his intent to hijack the pod suddenly quite clear.

"Better to have you on the outside in case something goes wrong," said Sheppard. And there it was. He didn't trust him to make it work, so he was trusting him to fix it when it broke. Come _on._

"It won't-"

Sheppard looked at him hard. "But if it _does_..."

Rodney was kneeling on the ground with a laptop computer propped on the edge of an empty stasis pod, otherwise he likely would have stomped his foot. "It won't! How many times do I have to say this?"

Just to make it worse, Teyla joined in on the harassment. "Rodney. Between the two of you, _if_ something were to go wrong, which would be the greater loss?"

"Well, I've never thought of it that way but..." Rodney mulled it over, unsettled and annoyed about it. Then he finally nodded and looked over at John. "She's right. You should go."

John and Teyla didn't have anything to say to that, no more arguments or insults, and Sheppard climbed into the stasis pod. And, as it turned out, there was trouble, and it hadn't been Rodney’s fault. But he saved Sheppard’s ass anyway. Despite the technical glitch of a Wraith intruder, the exploration of the Aurora wasn't a complete loss. They snagged the two ZPMs from the Aurora for testing, even though Rodney was fairly certain there would be nothing salvageable after ten thousand years providing life support for an entire crew of people.

*~*~*

The botany department had chosen their lab poorly. Plants needed daylight. They needed fresh air. And yet somehow, for some ungodly reason, they were in the bowels of the city, under the water level, with nothing natural. Only grow lights. How was that healthy? The lab was responsible for at least some of Rodney’s food source, and it was being deprived of two essential natural ingredients. That was unacceptable to him on some level, though he knew two years on there was nothing to be done about it.

The problem was, he still shared this opinion with Katie, while fighting off a panic attack during a quarantine lockdown. When no one in the city had even known Atlantis could initiate a lockdown automatically. There was too much to unpack in that new fact alone, but the fact that there _might_ be an unknown biological _reason_ for a quarantine lockdown was a whole other crisis for Rodney’s brain.

A few other personal theories and opinions snuck out that day, too. They did not leave the woman happy with him, and in hindsight, he could see that he should not have shared them. Plant people were sensitive and unreasonable in many ways, sitting around watching things grow, they did things exactly the opposite of everything Rodney knew. He didn't understand them. And he didn't understand Katie Brown, in that same regard.

But there was a ring in his pocket. He didn't have to understand somebody to marry them. That was the game, wasn't it? Pick the person, do the dating thing, marry them, and never have to worry about the dating thing again. There was a pattern, a predictable set of mile markers along the way for the relationship. It was mathematical in a sense. So many months of the pattern and it would repeat indefinitely. The ring was an expected part of the equation.

And, after nearly eleven months, Rodney liked Katie just fine. The only break in their pattern had been an argument a few months earlier. And _Cadman_ had somehow had to help them out with it when she took over Rodney’s body like a parasite, because apparently even the Wraith preferred to meddle.

But he didn't understand Katie. And she spent the later part of the day angry at him, mad at him for... what exactly, Rodney wasn’t sure. He was honest. He was upset. He had been trapped, in a place that he was allergic to, with nothing in the way except doors that refused to listen to his every attempt at a technological override.

Rodney was used to a certain amount of control over his environment, and during the lockdown, he had none at all. The only thing he could control was where he sat, and he found that lying down put the floor to his back, kept the room from swimming and jagging and collapsing on him. It was necessary. It was functional. It didn't hurt to breathe the recycled and allergen-filled air closer to the floor.

It was apparently also cowardly and childish. And Katie didn't Approve of it. It embarrassed her, somehow, even though they were the only two people in the room. She didn't understand him at all.

That was two-for-two. He didn't understand her, she didn't understand him. And the ring stayed in Rodney's pocket. And Katie canceled their dinner dates for the next week. Rodney rather thought that was for the best because he needed to make up for the lost time in the lab anyway, and he didn't think anything of it.

"Ah, lad," said Carson when Rodney mentioned why he sat on his own at dinner. Sheppard had canceled dinners months ago, and then Katie. Even Cadman looked on at him with a frown on her face.

"Do you want me to talk to her? To Katie?" Cadman asked. Rodney blinked at her.

"What for?" Rodney asked, confused.

Carson winced. " _Rodney_. For everything you've just said... it sounds like, well..."

"She dumped you," Cadman said plainly. She crossed her arms behind her plate and focused on Rodney, unyielding. "I'm sorry, but she did."

Rodney gaped at her for a moment, his mouth working but the automatic argument not forming. "Oh." was the best he could manage.

Cadman reached out toward him but set her hand beside his rather than touch him. "Look, McKay. It was maybe just a misunderstanding. But... honestly? It's okay. As someone who has been stuck rattling around in that head of yours, I don't think you and her were on the same page."

"Shh," mumbled Carson, a hand on Cadman's shoulder to shush the mention. Rodney glared at her and Cadman just rolled her eyes.

"No, really, get over it. It's been _months_ ," she said. "And I mean it. If she didn't understand what the lockdown did to you, she doesn't know you. _I_ shouldn't know you better than someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Ya get me? That's not right. And if you told her the truth, and she didn't hear you? You can't fix that."

Beside her, Carson nodded. "On this, we agree," said the doctor. "But ye should talk to her, Rodney. For yourself."

Eyes locked on the table in front of his plate, Rodney shoveled potato salad into his mouth and thought it over. Reluctantly, he shook his head.

"No, she's right," he said after a moment. "I should miss her here, now, right? It says something that I don't."

Cadman nodded her approval. Carson just frowned at him and pushed his food around on his plate. Rodney shrugged.

He missed Sheppard but he was getting used to that.

*~*~*

"This was a very bad idea," said Rodney. Across the room, in the light near the door, Sheppard nodded at the observation.

"We've survived a lot of those," he replied.

"How are you calm? None of this is okay," Rodney carried on. And John let him, nodding and listening as Rodney rambled. They were stuck, and what was worse, they were stuck and _drugged_. Rodney had been _drugged_. His _food_ had been drugged. He needed food to survive, it wasn't exactly an option for him to skip the requisite amount of meals until Aiden Ford decided to fix the 'gate and let them go home. It would end in pain and anger and stress and death and Rodney wasn’t looking forward to any of those while stuck in a cave on a planet where no one would know to look for them and...

"McKay, don't forget to breathe, or you won't have to worry about the food," Sheppard said, and he maybe sounded actually worried about whether or not Rodney was remembering to breathe. He paced back across the room the team had been left in to sleep - it was a cave! How was he supposed to sleep under so many tons of rock in the cold when he had a perfectly comfortable mattress in his rooms in Atlantis... - and sat down beside Rodney to keep him company.

"I'm hungry, though," complained Rodney, flopping an arm in distress. "I mean, I'm always hungry. And now I can't be. I have to eat, and I can’t eat, and I don't do well with Schrodinger's Diet Plan here, Colonel. I can't be afraid of food, it's bad for my overall survival."

"So you eat," said John. It was dark, and Sheppard sat next to him, so Rodney felt him shrug his shoulder. "And whatever I have left on my plate by the time you finish yours, you can have. Clean food, maybe it'll help. But Ford's not going to kill you, Rodney. He's got it all planned out. You're part of it. You'll be fine."

If he could have seen the man, Rodney would have glared. "I have a sensitive system! He doesn't know what will happen!"

"Neither do you," replied Sheppard.

"I can tell you what'll happen if none of us get any sleep at night," said Ronon.

"Not helpful," Sheppard said, quieter because he was looking away at where Ronon had holed up.

"Excuse me for not wanting to turn into a bug!" Rodney shot back. "A hypoglycemic _dead_ one."

"Hey!" Sheppard raised his voice that time to shut them both up. "As the only resident bug in attendance at this party, I say knock it off! That's an order!"

Rodney crossed his arms under his jacket and scowled at his boots even though he couldn't actually see them.

"Now. Settle down and think this through, Mer," said the Colonel, quiet. "He's not going to hurt you. He wants to send you home feeling better. Granted it's an entirely selfish endgame, but it is still his main goal. Alright? Ford isn't crazy, he's just... very focused."

"Being the object of someone's intense _scrutiny_ is not within my _comfort zone_ ," replied Rodney. "Particularly not when it comes with the side effect of _potential death_."

"Am I dead?"

"Do you know _how many_ _times_ you coded on Carson?!"

" _Am_ I _dead_ , Mer? Right now, are you talking to a real live human, or a ghost?" Sheppard challenged. He folded his hand over Rodney’s wrist and drove home the point. He wasn't asking some philosophical hypothetical, but asking about the present, the actual facts, binary _yes_ or _no_. Those were much easier on Rodney’s brain just then.

"Well, yes, you're alive, but-"

"See? The stuff I got hit with was ten times worse than this enzyme, especially once it has been distilled down to... down to oil fit for salad dressing and loaded with spices for flavoring," said Sheppard. "And your system is screwed up, I'll give you that, but you aren't actually fragile. Otherwise you wouldn't make it off-world."

"Ronon would have broken you by now if you were fragile, Rodney," added Teyla’s voice across the room. Somehow he could hear that she was smiling. Ronon grunted his agreement with her point, and Sheppard let go of his wrist to backhand his shoulder.

"See? _Told_ you," he said.

Whatever their reasoning, the logic helped, and Rodney felt himself calm down about the literal alien substance currently making itself at home in his bloodstream. He tucked back under his jacket-blanket and slouched to try to get some sleep like Sheppard told him to. And the Colonel stayed where he was, leaned against Rodney’s shoulder as a reminder that the team was still together.

"For all Ronon's an abrasive ape when he wants to be, and you've been a bug, I like the team better now," Rodney offered up tiredly after a few minutes. "Works better."

"Hush, Rodney."

"Nothing against Ford," Rodney added. "But we're better now. Like a machine. Gotta have the right parts."

Sheppard patted his shoulder and squeezed a little. "McKay. Sleep. No more talking."

And Rodney was exhausted and had worn himself out, so that time it stuck. The rest of the week was better after the initial freak out, only small panic moments instead of forty-five minute rants, and Rodney was able to start working on improving the Wraith Dart they needed for Ford and Sheppard's plan. The long days on that, and just having something to put his mind to work at helped. Ford said he cut back on dosing Rodney, too, because his thinking was too cloudy. The genius brain used the adrenaline fuel from the enzyme differently than Teyla and Ronon could, and Rodney wasn't as efficient as he needed to be.

But enzyme or not, there was no warning of the double-cross Ford pulled on them the morning they were supposed to leave. Rodney was stuck on the ground, waiting for his team to come back. Two hours turned to ten and then twelve and when daylight came around again, he was too paranoid to see reason. McKay stared at the bottles of enzyme, considering the risks of the necessary overdose. Worrying about his team. Checking every possible scenario of all the ways everything could go wrong with Ford's stupid plan against every possible reason his own stupid plan was legitimately stupid.

Rodney wasted _minutes_.

And then he finally downed the entire bottle of enzyme and went into enough of a berserker state that he couldn't consciously remember how he got home. He just remembered waking up in the infirmary, swearing at Carson, spitting out the coordinates for the Wraith ship, and nobody understanding him. The enzyme had to clear his system before they could understand him. That hurt. So much. Another twelve hours disappeared, turned into twenty, and Rodney was on his feet and going with Lorne's team to meet the Wraith ships on the Daedalus. It was his team. He was going.

*~*~*

Wraith were annoying but their queens were just exhausting. Sheppard's _brain_ hurt. The rest of him was fine, but his brain needed a week's vacation and some of that mead stuff Teyla’s friends had sent back with them. There wasn't much Carson could offer up for a wraith mindfucking, though, so Sheppard kept his mouth shut in the post-mission checkup. Ronon and Teyla needed to get checked over to be sure the enzyme was cleared, and Carson fussed at him to check John's blood work too, just in case. It seemed nobody trusted Aiden Ford anymore. Go figure.

Sheppard felt responsible for that. Ford was his team. He had been hurt on John's watch. There was nothing Sheppard could have done differently about the situation to change the results, but it was still him who had let Ford down. The guy was just a kid, twenty-four or twenty-five, maybe? And John couldn't talk him into trusting his CO to get help. A soldier was supposed to trust his CO wasn't out to screw him over. Alien intervention or not, that was some base-level leadership failure on Sheppard’s part.

Sheppard was standing by, alongside Elizabeth Weir, waiting for the report on Teyla and Ronon, when Failure the First all but jogged into the room just ahead of Colonel Caldwell.

"Why aren't you dead?" McKay blurted at him. John blinked, surprised despite himself. At least Rodney wasn’t _upset_ about the still-living status. He looked over at him, eyebrow raised

"Good to see you too, Rodney," said Sheppard, a mild grin on his face as Rodney started to flounder. He waved his hands, fingers moving as he tried to wipe the words out of the air around them.

"No, no, I mean - well, _you know_ what I mean. Why aren't you... _dead_?"

Letting him off the hook for it, John shrugged.

"Well, I knew when the hives started to shoot at each other, it was just a matter of time before they blew each other up, so I went to the space 'gate and dialed an address where I could land safely. I didn't think the Dart could fit in our gateroom," he said.

"The Colonel was kind enough to make us whole again, and we returned home," Teyla offered. Wrapped up in patient scrubs, she was perched comfortably on the infirmary bed like she was in the gym readying for meditation.

"I'm curious, Sheppard... how did you know the Wraith would fight each other?" Caldwell asked.

"Uh, a little intel from Ford in the game," Sheppard replied. He rubbed at the back of his neck, stalling the mental aches as best he could. "Plus... Well, I kinda goosed things along with the Queen."

"Goosed?" Rodney asked, a nearly silent squawk, and John bit his tongue to keep from laughing at the confusion on the physicist's face. Teyla was nowhere near amused and Sheppard didn't want to offend her when she had such a stern and serious expression at their hard-earned information.

"It would appear the Wraith are becoming more territorial than we had thought," she told them. "There is definite tension building among them."

"Which is good for us," said Ronon. John nodded his agreement with the assessment and studied the floor for a moment. He had watched the two ships tear each other apart. It was easy to get started, and incredibly lucky for his team. He hoped that luck still extended to Ford and didn't spare a lot of thought for any more logical alternatives. If Sheppard could get off the ship, someone as smart and slippery as Aiden had to have managed it, too.

The memory of the two ships fighting their battles with identical darts and artillery stuck with Sheppard for days. He wasn’t sure why, and it usually showed up when he realized he was late to meeting Rodney at dinner, on the heels of reminding himself he had called a halt to dinners. Dinner lately was, unless Teyla ordered otherwise, a to-go turkey sandwich and some jello that normally were gone by the time he hit his rooms. And then sleep. _God_ , he needed more sleep.

It got harder to sleep after the Wraith queen hacked his brain. Too many nightmares left behind to do more than cat-nap. He just needed some time to shake it. Sheppard figured he would be back to usual in a week. Except he wasn't. So he started taking himself on nighttime runs around Atlantis and the runner's high took care of it. It took him a few tries, but eventually something had to work.

*~*~*


	3. Chapter 3

The Molanbe were a solid people, good like the Athosians. It was officially on record with Elizabeth that John expected to be part of any visit to Teyla’s friendly village. Some of them were family to the Athosians, generations of marriage to keep the two communities connected. They were safe, and they knew how to be happy, and made good booze. John liked them.

After the last few months, the celebration in Molanbe was as good as doctor-ordered. AR-1 escorted fifteen Athosians to the planet and cleared two days to stay with them. Sheppard figured, after the last one, he would plan on the hangover and give himself a little room to recover. He was with his team, but he was on leave as far as he and Elizabeth were concerned. And it was the only way Elizabeth could force Rodney to take time off; they told him it was a mission and he went, but if she ordered him to take a rest day, he would spend all of it pacing in the lab anyway.

The planet had been occupied for thousands of years, and the Molanbe knew the threats and dangers, unlike what the Atlantis expedition and the Athosians faced on Lantea, where they didn’t know if the animals in the ocean were toxic or friendly. The waters were warm and welcoming here. So John spent the afternoon teaching a few kids how to surf. They knew boats, and fishing, but riding the waves was something that had somehow escaped their culture. It was amazing.

Sheppard didn’t want the sun to go down, but it, of course, did. He sent the kids back home well before he figured the basic laws of physics would make playing in the surf unsafe, and then he sat on the beach by himself until well after sundown. He had dried off by then and the bonfires had been lit back in the village for the continued celebration. Sheppard even heard the music from the handmade flutes and drums over the sounds of the waves. He had probably been out too long, maybe missed dinner, but if nothing else he had MREs in his pack.

All the same, he eventually headed back in, shrugging into his shirt on the way. It was only about a mile away from the beach, but it had been actual years since John had been surfing, and he wasn’t used to it. By the time John got to the village, his limbs were barely more than exhausted jello. He collapsed, boneless and happy, on the ground next to Rodney in front of one of the fire pits. Rodney looked over at him, frown in place.

“What took you so long? The kids were sent to bed an hour ago,” he chided. “Another half hour and we were sending out a search party.”

John shrugged to dismiss it and glanced over at him. “ _Je vis pour la mer_.”

Rodney stared back, unreadable beyond simply confused. “I am literally the _only_ other person here who speaks French, Colonel.”

Feeling his face flush, John looked back to the fire with another shrug of his shoulders, much less relaxed. “Right. Canadian.”

“Yeah. _That’s_ in my file, too, you know.”

John smiled at that. “Bet you still don’t want to dance with these nice folks, right?”

“Wasn’t planning to,” replied Rodney.

“Good. Surfing did me in. Can’t move,” John said. Maybe if he hit Rodney with enough non sequiturs, his big brain would short out and they could forget the whole thing. “But I miss having a place to surf. So... worth it.”

Rodney stared at him, slightly squinty eyed, but John found the fire absolutely fascinating and couldn’t look away to get a better read on just what his friend was thinking. If it had been anybody else, John probably would have been in trouble. With Rodney, he had good odds the guy would dismiss it as a taunt at his ego. So far, though, John couldn’t tell whose luck was going to win the battle of wills. Needing to escape his own screw up, John forced his aching, buzzy muscles to move and pushed himself up off the blanket-covered ground.

“Need food. If there’s anything left,” he said. Once he was standing, he looked down at Rodney again. “Want me to bring something back?”

The offer was further disarming and Rodney was the very picture of confused. “Yeah. Whatever,” he replied, because McKay was always hungry and easily bought off with food. The unexpected perks of hypoglycemia.

When John came back with a bowl of some kind of stew and bread as his offering, Rodney looked more like himself again. Less confused. John handed the bowl over hoping he hadn't broken anything this time. Then he resumed his spot on the ground from before. Music and voices washed over them, a wall of sound blended together with the roll of the waves and crackle of the fire in front of them. John stared blankly at the rocks just past his bare feet, happily not thinking about a thing and slouching against the large, well-worn log that served as the backrest of their blanket recliner on the dirt.

"Look, are you going to tell me what's going on? Or are we just gonna keep doing this?" McKay asked at his shoulder. Suddenly reminded that he still held a bowl of hot, delicious stew, John reached for the spoon to put food in his mouth and avoid the problem.

"I'm good. You?" he asked, his mouth full.

Rodney’s booted foot kicked him in the calf for it. "Not good."

John reverted to slurping his soup and looking around to make sure he knew where Ronon and Teyla were. He had enjoyed his day so far, he didn't want any new surprises added to his screwup.

"Is this because of Arcturus still?" Rodney asked, quiet. John let out a breath, relief dragging it out.

"There's no _this_ , Rodney," said John. "Arcturus was months ago."

"Yes, that's my point," replied Rodney. "And you are still acting like I did something wrong."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but blowing up a solar system is generally considered a _bad_ idea," John whispered back at him.

"So is waking up the _Wraith_. So why..." Rodney trailed off, and John looked up at him. "Just... what happened?"

And John was stuck there, green eyes staring at bright blue, and he locked up for the space of entire heartbeats, mouth open to say something, whatever would make sense, and nothing happened. He managed to blink and tried again.

" _We_ blew up a solar system, Rodney. I don't think I'm supposed to be okay with that," he replied. "And I gotta... figure stuff out."

That surprised Rodney. "Well, _are_ you okay with that?"

Hedging, John shrugged. "Maybe more than I should be?"

"Then what-"

"Look, McKay, we're a team. We're staying a team. And Arcturus isn't gonna happen again. _Ever_. We good?" John tried for the diversion Rodney had offered up so nicely.

Rodney blinked and shut his mouth, apparently unable to argue with that. He nodded.

"Good," said John. He finished his bowl and made himself stand up. "I need a drink. You want something?"

Rodney considered it that time. Then nodded. "Whatever they've got."

That was a surprise but John wasn't giving him a chance to think twice about it. He took their bowls and traded them off for booze, then sat back down.

"To no more exploding planets," he said, holding the mug up near Rodney’s. Rodney echoed him and they shared a drink, and as far as John could tell, things relaxed again. His absence was noticed and Teyla and her cousin Arlen showed up to make him go be social with adults who weren't only Rodney not long later. McKay again politely declined to join them. Probably afraid of the likelihood of being around people who were dancing if he stood up.

Given how physically tired he was from the day already, John hadn't planned to risk more than a couple of drinks. But he ended up at four. He felt like a lightweight so whatever they put in that booze had to be strong. John was not known for making the best life choices. His head was going to hurt in the morning, right along with the rest of him. He eventually bowed out of the storyteller crowd and headed to find a place to sleep before he got himself in more trouble.

Come to think of it, John had been finding trouble left and right since Arcturus. Not that he was superstitious but maybe he had some karma to clear somehow for blowing up five-sixths of a solar system. He saw that Rodney was awake, sitting on the steps up to the common house where they were to stay, working on a tablet. So he reported his new theory since Rodney had been the one to bring up the stupid planet to start with.

"That's my luck. I'm in the cosmic crosshairs now," John told him. "So if you could figure out how to fix _that_ , that would be great."

Rodney watched him make his way up the steps before standing up and following him inside. "I'm sorry, I'm to fix _what_ , exactly?"

John shook his head, a huff of laughter at it. "Nothing, Rodney. It was a joke."

John contemplated his dried shorts and shirt and the general amount of sand they likely contained before he looked down at his sleeping bag. That was going to be another mistake. But he could clean the sleeping bag later. That was a problem for Sober-Shepp. Not that John was _drunk_ , exactly, but he was buzzed enough to be lazy just then.

Rodney, in his uniform minus the jacket, went to his sleeping bag, too. His computer was stashed in his pack, and buried under his gear, ready to go as usual. John's uniform and gear had sprawled a little over his pack, and his boots... had wandered off. Another problem for Sober-Shepp to solve in a few hours. And John settled down into his sleeping bag with his jacket wadded up for a pillow. He was about to lie down on it when... it disappeared. His head _thunked_ on the wood floor instead.

"What the hell- oww..." John sat back up, looking around stupidly to find his jacket. He wasn’t expecting to find it in Rodney's hands, the man sitting in his sleeping bag and watching him with one of his many unamused faces. John squinted at him and pouted as he rubbed at the back of his head.

"What the hell, Rodney. Are you drunk?" That was probably the only _acceptable_ reason for smacking John in the head so hard by-proxy of jacket-theft.

"Nope, _you_ are," said Rodney.

"Am _not_ ," returned John. He jerked at the jacket, but Rodney didn’t let go of it.

"Tell me why. That's all. You avoid me when we're back in Atlantis, and then you're... you're _weird_ off-world. Almost normal, but not," he said. It was probably an order, except the genius forgot he wasn't military, and he definitely didn’t outrank a Lieutenant Colonel.

"Air Force, asshole. What am I _supposed_ to do?" John shot back. The answer surprised Rodney enough that John won his jacket back. He wadded it up protectively and purposefully held it in place behind his neck before lying down again. Rodney stared at him, wide eyed in the dim light of the room.

"What?" Rodney asked. The man was a genius, but he was also currently dumb, _and_ annoying. John turned to his side to offer his friend his back as a clear sign that the conversation was done.

"No," Rodney tried again, reaching out and catching his shoulder to drag him back. "Look-"

John sat up. "No, _you_ look. We've got two choices here," he said flatly. "I get my shit together, and we keep our team, we keep Atlantis. Or I don't, I get sent back, and Atlantis gets a new CO. That's the way this goes."

Rodney stared at him, eyes unfairly bright blue. He could see like it was daylight and John hated it. He didn't know if Rodney understood yet, was afraid he did, even though he hoped he did. At least then it would be done with. No more questions. John could sleep and wake up and they could pretend it hadn't happened. They were good at that. Or they had been. They would get back to it. They had to.

"Now good night, Rodney," John said, finally curling back on his side to hold his jacket-pillow in place. Rodney sat there and stared at his back for a few minutes before he eventually lay back down himself. But he stayed there. He didn't move away.

"We keep our team," he heard Rodney tell him, sometime before he fell asleep. John was still awake, glaring at the empty bedrolls spread out across the room, glad Ronon and Teyla were still out at the celebration. He didn't calm down until he heard Rodney’s breathing even out, proof the man was asleep and it was safe to relax. John buried his face in his jacket then, wished he was still buzzed, and spent way too long mentally kicking himself. He didn't remember falling asleep, but thankfully did, and he was passed out long before Teyla and Ronon finally gave up for the night.

*~*~*

The next morning was exactly as painful as John figured it would be. They ended up bunking with a dozen Athosians, not just their own team, because the meeting room was big enough to share. But John had slept through every single person creeping in. Rodney had ended up crowded into his space trying to get away from strangers and John felt Rodney leaned at his back. He stayed where he was rather than move at all. His core was killing him and sitting up was going to hurt. Aside from the fact that he would wake McKay.

John dozed where he was until daylight, until more of the snoring bodies puzzle-pieced around the room started waking up. He saw Teyla sit up and figured he had no excuse after that. She squinted like she had a headache to rival his, but her face was otherwise relaxed in a content smile. When she saw John was awake, the smile widened and she held a finger to her lips. John smiled back and took it as permission to stay where he was.

Once the kids woke up, though, it was all over for peace. It started out with just two of them picking through their sleeping cousins to hunt down Sheppard, but once they did, four of them kneeled or stood over him and Rodney, poking at him timidly and asking to go surfing again. John had created monsters, roughly six of them so far, and he didn’t exactly feel terrible about it.

The kids standing around woke up Rodney and John found himself herding the kids back away from them and toward the door. Teyla was laughing at him as the ten year old Aella tugged his hand to make sure he left with them. Maybe Sheppard's ancient forty-something body hated him for letting a pack of kids kidnap him to the beach for the morning but it was kind of perfect for the rest of him. They only had two boards, so John got to sit out a few rounds, but mostly he was out in the water and supervising as the kids took turns. He was going to have to figure out how to help these guys make their own boards.

It was surprising as hell to find Rodney camped out on the beach when he got back from a ride. When Sheppard got his head out of the water, he smelled food and figured Teyla had probably sent him. His pint-sized kidnappers hadn't exactly allowed him to stop for breakfast. John turned over his board to the oldest kid there, sending him out to play lifeguard, and made for the food.

Soaking wet in his shirt and swim trunks, John stayed away from the blanket Rodney had set up, but he gladly took the meal McKay handed over.

"It's too early for this," Rodney told him, squinting at the sunlight. It was about mid-afternoon by John's watch, but the sun hinted more like ten am by the planet's version of time. It was bright but John had been out in it for an hour. He shrugged.

"It's water. Next best thing to being in the air," he replied. "I'm here for it."

Rodney scrunched his nose up at it. "But what kind of aquatic life do they have here? The whales on Lantea-"

"So? We have sharks back on Earth," John pointed out. "And dolphins, man, those guys can be jerks. The thing is to just respect where you're at. We're playing in somebody else's house. I think these kids got that part figured out."

Rodney hummed at his point, seemed to accept it. Then he followed the calm logic to the natural conclusion. "And you’re not leaving the boards here."

"Hell no," replied John, grinning.

It turned out, Rodney was hiding from the community clean-up that had been called after the night's festivities. He much preferred the nap on the beach to putting the village back to normal, or helping with the gardening as was also apparently on the to-do list. Menial labor wasn't his forte, and the locals didn't have any pressing engineering puzzles for him to solve, so Rodney opted to stay out of the way.

No more was said about Sheppard’s failures at being a standoffish CO, or his excellent creds at being a shitty friend. They seemed to have found the rug to brush everything under again. Whatever it was, it sat there in the background, and they both were in agreement to leave it alone. John slipped up and called him by his family nickname once, but Rodney didn't say anything about it. And he could have gone back to Atlantis at any time, could have been doing actually productive things with his time instead of slathering on sunscreen and fending off kids who wanted to know what his tablet was, or why his boots were shiny, but he stuck around.

There was a community dinner that night, but it was much calmer, not the celebration of the night before, and John stuck to food and water for the sake of his head in the morning. He went in early and staked out a corner of the converted sleeping hall so that Rodney didn't get crowded by strangers on all sides again, and he got Teyla and Ronon to close ranks a little, too. Not that there was any threat, nothing was wrong, but the team was leaving in the morning. Teyla was staying behind with Halling and the Athosians for another few days, and John was feeling strangely territorial. They didn't have to share blankets or anything, but if he was going to rearrange everyone's staked out sleeping spots for Rodney, he could rearrange for the rest of his team, too.

There were no hangovers the next morning, just Rodney complaining about his back, and the unyielding injustice of hand-hewn wood floors.

"Next time we get stuck on an overnight, can we make it some place with Five-Star accommodations? I am apparently getting too old for this," Rodney said. John choked on a laugh and left the easy target alone. And on their walk back to the 'gate, Ronon found him a walking stick he could use as a cane in his old age. McKay used it to hit him with, just like he tried to do when they made him learn the sticks with Teyla. His only saving grace was that Ronon hadn't brought the sticks along, so he just blocked with the surfboard he carried, rather than retaliate.

Teyla and her cousin saw them off at the 'gate, and John's shore-leave ended with a simple wave and a step through the overly bright and watery wormhole. They had to get cleared with Carson, like usual, to make sure there were no mystery bugs on the foreign planet hijacking their way back to Atlantis, but that was it. No debriefings, no reports to write, just the end of their downtime. Back at home and back to work. Sheppard had two days of work to catch up on and got to it, because his watch said it was already noon and he was an extra half day behind already just for the jet-lag.

Over the next couple of days though, John made it a point to track Rodney down for meal breaks. Avoiding him at home was just making everything worse. For both of them.

*~*~*

Teyla and Halling came back mostly on schedule with their Athosian crowd, and promises had been made for the Molanbe to visit in return in a month's time. The only glitch in their planning was that thanks to the time difference between the two planets, Teyla was going to be caught up in line waiting for Carson's team to clear her and the others before she could go off world. They could have waited, but there was no need to, not for a milk run opp to a planet Teyla had no experience with.

The planet was listed in the Ancients' Database, and everything about it looked like a civilized, friendly planet. No recent information was available, and the drone they sent through showed green trees and high humidity. They were taking a botanist along to this one, just because there were notes in the Database that Rodney said looked like the planet provided medicinal aid, and if nothing else they could steal some plants on their wanderings. Aubrey Hart had been with the Botany Department from the start and had been off-world before with Lorne's team, so while first-contact wasn't her usual team, she at least knew how to handle herself. Everything would be fine for a quick meet-and-greet with the locals.

So John and Elizabeth made the call that AR-1 was fully staffed and, a half hour after Teyla returned, John's team set out to try M5S-332 as per the schedule. It was weird going out without Teyla, and the very second they were on the other side, Rodney started protesting in his very Rodney-way, by complaining about the air and the humidity, and ordering Hart around as he waved a gizmo for tracking power signatures and she stopped to look at trees. After a half hour of it, Hart let out a sigh and shook her head.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Dr. McKay, but I suddenly understand why you and Katie didn't get on," said Hart. "It used to baffle me because Katie is just so... _Katie_. She gets along with _everyone_. But now... now I get it."

John snorted, hiding it in the crook of his elbow. The young woman had sass to match even if she was the quiet type. Rodney was suddenly ruffled and he fluffed up, a little red faced. In the interests of an eventual peaceful first contact, Sheppard realized he was going to have to get involved. He caught Rodney’s eye and gave him The Eyebrow.

"You didn't mention you two kids broke up," he said.

"Yeah, well, you've been _busy_ , haven't you?" Rodney returned, annoyance obvious.

"It was weeks ago," Hart offered up. "Katie didn't say anything. We only found out about it because she renamed the cactus. Which was going to have to happen anyway, honestly, because it had been classified wrong in the first place."

"Ha!" crowed Rodney, apparently satisfied with the loss due to the ultimate human-error at the heart of it. "What kind of idiot misclassifies a cactus."

"It's apparently closer to a type of bromeliad, at the DNA level. She couldn't figure out why she kept killing it, and it turned out, we were watering it wrong. The spines were attached to leaf layers, like an onion? And watering the soil didn't work. It was this whole process," said Hart, talking with her hands to illustrate a not-a-cactus for John and Ronon.

" _Alien_ cactus," John said helpfully.

"Yes, exactly," said Hart. "It's really fascinating. We figure that, basically, the plants must have-"

The scientist saw the scowl on Rodney’s face and decided on her own to stop talking about fake-cactus. She even wandered off to a flowering tree off the road to start examining leaves and dug into her pack for something. Ronon had their six and he stopped to wait for her, shooting Sheppard a flatly unamused look for the babysitting. Rodney still charged ahead, his attention possessed by readings on some doodad gizmo in his hand, so John stuck with him. This was why there was a rule about too many scientists on a single team, Sheppard realized as the group split neatly in two.

Rodney eventually found them the promised civilization as the well-traveled, wide dirt trails they had been following opened up to a paved road that wove out to a massive city. It wasn’t exactly modern, but it was certainly closer to modern than most others. Just blindly guessing, John put it at about a half century past the Hoff or maybe even Genii level. Shining glass windows on multistory buildings, no different than old Paris or New York City. And they hadn't suffered a culling in years, given the immaculate outward appearance of every building and wall.

"Wow," said Hart. "That is _not_ a village."

"The Database said they were competent healers," replied Rodney. "That requires a certain level of advancement and even peace to understand how science works as opposed to simply religion."

"Yes, agreed," said Hart. "Look at the stagnation that happens during every war back on Earth. And the whole fiasco of the Spanish Inquisition..."

"Let's not be discussing Earth's dirty laundry in front of our new friends, huh?" John interrupted. That seemed a fair consensus and there was no more talk of war and torture on the walk out of the hills to meet the city.

It really was a city and it took hours to find their way to the local government offices of the city marked by the Ancients as Daturan. Sheppard felt dazed as he realized he wouldn't be dealing with the backwater crazies and the impressionable zealots. They saw hundreds of people, talked to a handful of them, passed storefronts with glass windows, restaurants with cafe seating in the streets... It was an urban city, with paved roads and statues and art displays. A thriving, industrial culture on a planet well within Wraith territory. These guys had _something_.

And John's team was stuck waiting in a lobby for an audience with the city’s leadership, John feeling very underdressed in his fatigues after having walked through eighty-nine-degrees-plus-humidity for four hours to get to the heart of the city. He tried to straighten his collar, made the others zip up their jackets.

"Hats off," he told Hart, and the botanist promptly complied, her short blonde hair sticking up nearly as bad as John's did. He shuffled awkwardly and missed Teyla suddenly. He motioned toward the mess, wincing inwardly. "Can you... I mean... hat-hair..."

Hart dodged off to find a reflective surface and then returned, like magic, looking more composed than any of them a minute later, her hat looped to the back of her pack. The young scientist was all smiles and mouthed a polite _thank you_ for the effort John had been certain would have gotten him glared at by Elizabeth. First impressions mattered and all that, but he couldn't exactly tell Rodney to fix his attitude yet he could tell the woman to fix her hair? So much trouble if Elizabeth found out. John just hoped he didn't have dirt on his face or something, because it wasn't like Rodney or Ronon would tell _him_.

"There was no indication in the Database that this planet would possibly be this far advanced," Rodney rambled, thankfully not at his usual volume level, but he was still loud. They had already heard his assurance on that front three times. John shushed him. And they waited. John eyed the sky outside the wall of windows and saw the sun sinking low. They had been on the planet for _hours_.

"I'm thinking we'll be sleeping in an alley tonight," Sheppard said, frowning.

"Can we schedule an appointment?" Hart asked, genuine apparently. The Colonel blinked and stared at her, absolutely shocked at the validity of her question in their current circumstances. It wasn’t something they'd had to consider before. Ever. At all.

Sheppard was beginning to suspect she had the right idea of it when finally someone showed up, a brown haired young man in a soft suit of sorts, formal but not at all familiar, and all apologies for the wait. "The Proctor has been in meetings all afternoon and is only just available. Right this way."

The building was fancy, by Earth standards, even if it was a few decades behind. They were led up a large staircase, stone or marble of some kind, with the four Lanteans marching up shoulder to shoulder, four across, over a red carpet that had to have been machine-crafted. Statues and artwork lined the walls, and there were lights overhead, some form of electricity that John swore he could hear buzzing. At the top of the stairs they came to a hallway just as impressive as the rest, but compounded by the fact that every five feet, an armed guard in silver-plated armor stood at attention, like Sheppard and his team were walking into Buckingham Palace, not the mayor's office.

Proctor Practis was a tall blonde man, very pointy-faced and what seemed a universal version of "proper" to present a high contrast to the ragtag space explorers standing sweaty and half melted in his office. John didn't apologize for their appearance, however, on the off chance it would go unnoticed if he didn't call attention to it. Instead, he launched into a slightly less dumbed-down version of the usual introductory speech.

"You are from the City of the Forefathers?" Practis asked after a time, arch and maybe impressed. Sheppard nodded.

"We were the last inhabitants of it, until it was destroyed in a Wraith attack," he replied. "We were able to relocate to a safer location. And now we're, well, trying to build our resources up. We still have goods and skills to do well, medicines and vaccinations to keep people safe, but those finer details of food can be harder to come by."

Practis nodded his understanding. "So you wish to trade with my city."

"It seems like something that would be quite mutually beneficial," said Sheppard, relying on that winning smile. "Our two societies seem to have a lot in common, really. Seeing this city was a breath of fresh air, I'll admit."

"Oh, I think not. Your guards are marked like thieves. Your women are strange," replied Practis easily, waving an idle hand between Ronon and Hart. Not at all abashed. Lacking any immediate understanding of the accusation about guards, all eyes turned briefly to Aubrey Hart, who seemed to shrink into her backpack slightly where she stood. The woman was not _strange_ to their usual definition. John was willing to bet if she hadn't been a botanist, she would have been Rodney’s type.

"I'm sorry?" Rodney questioned, looking back to the Proctor. John tapped his jacket at his wrist to get him to back off, but he did so even as he subtly shifted his stance to block the short female botanist behind them from easy view.

"Your customs are wrong. Why would you have a woman of such low morals on your expedition? I understand that you are from an older society, but there are some precautions that are simply universal," the Proctor replied. He motioned dismissively toward Hart. "Her skin is uncovered, her hair has been shorn. Woman laborers are trouble. Not a good example to set of your people."

"We've been walking for hours," Ronon spoke up, just as annoyed, and John was set on bugging out. "Her skin covering washed off in the heat. And while we _waited_ here."

"She's an educated citizen," Sheppard said, drawing the Proctor's attention back. "As highly educated as myself and my team here, Proctor. We're not laborers. We don't have guards. We're just travelers. We were unaware of your customs and meant no offense. So if we have, we'll just take our leave. Head back home without trouble."

John glanced at Hart and motioned to mime a hat, and the sharp woman dug her hat off her bag and slipped it on, brim at the back to hide her short-styled hair. Sheppard half turned to wave the doctor forward, a hand at her shoulder to keep the apparently offensive member of their troop in easy reach.

The Proctor watched them before nodding. "As you wish. I'll have you escorted to the Monument now."

"Appreciate it," said Sheppard, the fake smile on his face to placate the crazy. This planet was a bust. If Hart's hair was too short, there was no way the man would talk to even Elizabeth. And who the hell conducted business based on hairstyles and makeup, anyway?

The Proctor followed them out to the hall, where the decorative soldier types who had lined the walls every few feet on their approach fell quickly into an escort formation at a word from the Proctor. To the blond guard closest to the door, the Proctor quietly ordered that the travelers be delivered to the Monument of the Forefathers. The guard nodded his understanding and the Lanteans were urged forward as the door closed behind them.

"Should have brought the Jumper," Rodney complained. He was clearly annoyed and kept himself away from the guards as they moved down the long hallway toward the stairs. Sheppard kept the botanist in front of himself, with the others on either side, ranks closed protectively but with enough room to move.

He didn't like the situation they found themselves in. And maybe they would try again someday, in a Jumper, without any female members of the expedition just to find out the story behind this place. It wasn’t right. There had been women in the street on the way there, Hart had even asked one for directions at one point. They were normal, no different from Hart, aside from wrapped in clothes that looked very obviously culturally different, skirts and boots and frilly, weather-appropriate sleeves. Their hair had probably been styled differently but John tried not to pay attention to that shit when he was working, no matter how many times Rodney called him Kirk.

And now his team was lost in the bowels of a city built like a multi-story maze, a place it had taken them hours to find, and would take them hours to get out of on their own. But he didn't trust the Proctor or his guards, either. It rang alarm bells when they were led to an elevator rather than the stairs they had been brought up by. They were passed off to a single pair of guards in full body armor, complete with fancy face masks, and that couldn't be a good sign.

It wasn't.

The doors closed on Rodney’s complaining about _not_ getting to take the stairs for once, and Ronon made an annoyed grunt of agreement. The metal box they were in cranked loudly but it wasn't bad, for what it was. They hadn't seen cars on the streets but the culture had functioning motors and electric and all the comforts of home back on Earth that they had seen so far.

"Shit. What's that?" Ronon asked. John caught the scent too, lifting his shirt front as the only filter he could grab.

"Gas!"

"What? I don't smell any-" Rodney broke off on a cough and started trying to bury his face in his sleeve as he struggled to reach his shirt. It was nothing more than a stall tactic, more for the benefit of their psych response than any use at all for their lungs. John's eyes stung and watered and his throat was on fire as he struggled to breathe. He caught Rodney’s shoulder, trying to keep them both upright, but it backfired, dragging them both toward each other as Sheppard stumbled back against the wall. He passed out squinting up at a guard, safe in the corner, who looked like he was wrapped in shiny tooled tin foil.

*~*~*


	4. Chapter 4

Rodney woke up with a headache and a mouth full of cotton scratchy grossness. The former came from too long without eating, the latter, usually from being drugged. Gassed counted as drugged. His eyes still stung. Everything was dark.

"Whereami?" he managed, raising a hand to feel the wall he leaned on.

"A box," came Ronon's voice from not far away. "Just so you know. It moves. Don't freak out or I _will_ put you right back out."

"Maybe you should do that anyway. I don't like small spaces. More claustrophobic than I care to admit, generally. Oh, this isn't good. No."

Ronon didn't deck him for rambling so apparently that wasn’t the kind of freak out he warned against. Then what... _wait_.

"Where's Colonel?" Rodney asked.

"Still out," said Ronon. "So's Hart."

That was a relief. Rodney kicked his feet out, hitting what felt like his backpack. "Are you kidding- they left us our stuff?"

"Not like they need it," said Ronon. Rodney reached for it and came to the startling discovery that his left wrist was stuck at his hip. He tugged and it felt like his jacket sleeve was caught on some part of the corner of the metal box. He tugged at it again and it rattled. Rodney got his right hand to investigate and found it wasn't his jacket. 

"What is-" He didn't bother finishing the question because he realized soon enough what it was; his right wrist had the foreign strap on it, too. It just wasn't locked down. Some kind of handcuffs but made of soft cloth or leather that felt just like his jacket cuff. That was definitely not good. Rodney turned his attention to the backpack he could kick, and he dragged it closer. One handed, he dug through pockets until he found power bars and he started shoving them in the pockets of his pants. Then he zipped it back up and kicked it away, frustrated. And he dug out a power bar.

"Can you reach a pack? We should get the food," said Rodney, looking blindly toward Ronon. He could only barely see the man's outline across from him. But the answer was a negative anyway, as the packs were at the front of the box, and Rodney was closest. He could only reach the one. Suddenly the box lurched and Rodney let out an involuntary noise, but he managed to keep it from getting too loud. 

"Told you," said Ronon. And the idiot wasn't wrong, but that didn't make Rodney feel any better as their box continued moving. It gradually got hotter and brighter inside the box, thanks to the air-holes that lined the top of the metal crate. Rodney could see again, and he noticed that Ronon couldn't move the hand closest to the doors, and when he turned his head, there was a rattle of chain from a length of it that came down from the top of the box. Rodney felt sick, but losing his lunch would only make it worse.

The box was tall enough for Ronon to sit, and wide enough for their legs to stretch out from where they sat. Rodney sat on one side, by the doors, and he faced Ronon, the man's legs stretched out alongside Rodney’s. John was slouched beside Rodney, just on the other side of Rodney’s locked down wrist and Ronon's boots. Hart was on the other end, passed out beside Ronon and slumped toward his shoulder over John's boots. There was just enough room, end to end, for two adults per side. It was close quarters and soon to be stifling now that their humid box was moving in sunlight. 

After what seemed like an hour, the box stopped. Two of them were still passed out. Then Rodney heard a far too familiar sound. The _clank_ and _whoosh_ of the DHD and the Stargate. 

"Ohno. Nonono," he said out loud. Even Ronon recognized the sound, and they both started digging at the things on their wrists that locked them to the box. Ronon tugged at the strap at his neck and quickly stopped to gag. In the light, Rodney could see that they were some kind of seamless leather strap with metal rings in a couple of places, and the metal rings were trapped through a hole in the box that somehow fixed the link to lock on the outside of the box. 

Rodney looked up, feeling the panic and the heat, and it finally registered fully that not only was Ronon wearing one on each wrist, there was one around his neck as well. Rodney found it on his own, too. He leaned over and grabbed Sheppard's jacket collar, pulling it away to see they all sported the menacing new jewelry. 

And then the box went through the 'gate, no different than going through in the Jumper. They blinked out and then back in, and nothing had changed, except the temperature was cooler, less humid. 

Rodney caught a fistful of Colonel Sheppard's jacket and shook him. "Colonel! Wake up! We have a problem-"

They had a bigger one if Sheppard wouldn't wake up. The box kept moving for a short distance before it stopped and didn't start up again. Instead, a few minutes later, the door next to Rodney opened. The jostled backpacks fell to the ground as bright, overcast sunlight flooded in, hurting Rodney’s eyes. He peeked out at guards, dressed in the silver of the guards from the Daturan Proctor's office, though these were cloth though rather than walking tin-cans. And they aimed funny looking weapons right in his face.

"Ohboy..."

*~*~*

It didn't get any better after that. Rodney was let loose from the box only to be moved to a cart with a metal jail-cell on the back. He refused to call it a cage when it was taller than Ronon, and none of them were birds. But one by one, they were removed from the box, and, as the first one out, Rodney scrambled to remove his coat when he realized their intent with the pile of chain at the guard’s feet. He grimaced as he was forced to allow the bands at his wrist to be locked together by a ridiculous length of chain. The Daturans apparently didn’t understand what Sheppard and Dex could do with two feet of chain at hand, and Rodney wasn’t going to warn them. Then he was locked up in a box they could see out of. And Rodney didn't have his sunscreen. 

Ronon was next, and he just glowered down at the man who dared tell him where to go, to stand still, and when to climb into the cart. Sheppard had to be carried out of the box, and he looked sick, red eyes and pale face. Considering he had spent the last few days in the sun and salt water on-leave, that couldn't be a good sign. But he had at least fully resumed consciousness by the time he was dumped in the cart and seemed very confused by the fact that somebody had tossed his coat on his face. Hart made it over under her own steam, though she looked dizzy and groggy. She instantly sat down at the back and curled up, as the other three stood and watched their surroundings. 

Rodney resigned to carrying his jacket until Aubrey thought to tie it at her waist rather than sacrifice it, which seemed a good enough idea. Their packs and weapons were stashed in a box by the driver, out of sight and unreachable. Past the front of the cart, Rodney could just barely see the outline of something that looked like an alien bull, or some similar pack animal. He couldn’t quite figure out the advancement level of the Daturans, with their shining city on one planet and their beast-drawn carts on another.

He saw the 'gate still glowing and watched as two other boxes like the one they had been moved in came through. It was on some kind of hover system, which boggled the mind. There had been no cars or planes in the city, their elevators even mechanical and out of date by Earth's standards. And there they were, using solid electromagnetic, silent hovertech. What the hell even were these people?

The metal boxes unloaded five more people, and Sheppard groggily herded Rodney back toward Hart as the group (four men and one woman) was loaded into their cart. All of them were dirty. None of them looked healthy. Rodney crowded in against Ronon and tried not to step on Hart. Ronon huffed at him and moved him to stand against the bars. That drew Rodney’s attention back to their surroundings and he saw a large open space around the 'gate, with large rock and boulder walls all around. Animals that looked vaguely like horses were tethered near a long house of sorts against one wall, but otherwise the cart and boxes and guards were the only occupants of the valley around the 'gate. There were spatterings of trees around the hills beyond the tall stone-built and ancient walls. Absolutely nothing familiar or at all remarkable about the place.

Sheppard appeared at his shoulder, caught the bar in front of them as the cart got off to a rough start on wheels that did not move as smooth as the hovertech. The cart made an obnoxious thumping noise, and the people in the mobile-jail cell in the back all jingled and _chi-chinked_ from the chains.

"Pay attention," said the Colonel, quiet. "We'll need to find this place again."

"Oh, well, if you say so," replied Rodney. "I thought I'd just stand here and take a nap."

"If you want to. Just do it with your eyes open," Sheppard said with an accepting shrug.

Wherever they were, it wasn’t far from sunset. Which Rodney took as a stroke of luck because the planet appeared to have two suns. Sunshine glaring or not, it was going to get cold before too long. It wasn’t easy standing in a plodding cart, but it was better than sitting curled up like Hart was trying to do. The Colonel stood with one hand on the bars for balance and his back to Rodney’s shoulder, keeping watch over their fellow prisoners with Ronon. The Lanteans offered high contrast to the others and mostly were left to their own space, but that didn't mean they trusted it. It was easier to watch the terrain when he didn't have to worry about getting stabbed in the back, anyway. 

It seemed like actual hours before the cart stopped, but Rodney figured they couldn't have gone more than four miles from the gate. "We could have walked here faster and it would have been less painful," he complained as the cart rolled into another walled-off open area. His knees were killing him just from standing. Sheppard thumped him encouragingly on the back, ever the sarcastic jerk, as he let go of the bars.

They watched their stuff get unloaded from the box with the driver, and carried off toward the rocky hill that lined one side of the camp they had been delivered to. Rodney watched it disappear into what looked like a cave that had a wall built into it and a proper, lockable door. 

"I hate caves," he muttered. 

"Bats are cute though," replied Sheppard. Rodney rolled his eyes. Ronon shook his head.

"You’re both unstable," said the Satedan on a sigh. 

They waited, expecting some kind of mass exodus from the crowded cart, but the cart was left alone. Rodney’s annoyance inched higher. They could climb a wall and clear four miles back to the gate. They had achieved far more impressive things as a team. But he was stuck in a see-through box. And until he got out of the box, they couldn't get very far.

At sundown they still sat in the cart. Rodney did finally sink down to sit, glowering around him. Sheppard kicked his boot to make him look up.

"At least we're not melting here," he pointed out.

"Oh, yes, let me write the Proctor a thank you for their consideration of the planetary environment when placing their work camp," replied Rodney. "It's _not_ hot when the suns are out, Colonel. What do you think it does when the sun goes down? Care to take a guess?"

Sheppard looked up at the hillside above the cave that had eaten their gear. "Based on the snow up there, I'm thinking it gets cold here, doc."

Rodney huffed at him and folded his arms over his knees. The Colonel looked over at Ronon where he leaned against the back of the box less than a foot away from him. "You worried yet?"

Ronon shrugged. "Bored, maybe."

Sheppard grinned at him for it. Rodney pounded his head against his arms. Sheppard crouched, stretching in what little space he was allowed. He caught Hart's hand at her knee beside Rodney, getting the botanist to look up at him.

"Two days, tops. We'll get home quick, alright? Just hang in there," he told her, quiet enough that Rodney hardly heard him and he was knee to knee with the Colonel. Hart nodded her understanding but all the same, tucked her head back to her arms and stared at the driver's seat at the front of the cart. Sheppard looked at Rodney then, one eyebrow raised in silent question. Rodney just nodded; so far he was fine. Pissed off was his usual state of existence and he hadn't gotten a chance to worry yet.

*~*~*

The nice and easy escape scheme Sheppard had in mind wasn't going to come together as easily as he wanted it to. He had seen the caves in the hillside, figured on getting locked in with the crowd behind the big wood doors. There were ways around doors and that idea hadn't worried him too much. The thing he hadn't counted on was getting locked up when they were locked in. _That_ was a problem. 

There was no way to know how far back the caves went, or how many people were crammed in at once, but the guards took them back in small, manageable groups, and the new prisoners had to wait in the cart until the rest got in from wherever they had been working. John watched them trail in, covered in dirt and sweat that he could smell from where he had been stuck in the open-air cage cart fifty yards away. It left him with a bit of a headache and a disgusted sneer. It got worse when he was stuck inside.

After letting them out to use a thankfully plumbed restroom of sorts, and ignoring Rodney’s questions about dinner, the guards led them to one of the walled off cave entrances. They were narrow caves, with not a lot of room to waste on bunking the help according to any humane conventions, so the guards had set things up for sitting-room only in spaces lit by long energy lines of some type, with strange glowing green lights every twenty feet. The green lights were oddly bright but set everything to a permanent night vision, no heavy shadows to deal with.

"What is this place?" Sheppard asked one of the guards in charge of the group from the cart.

"The Coffers of the Forefathers," said the guard. 

"Well, there's been a mistake," said Rodney quickly. "We were only to be escorted to the Monument of the Forefathers. Big round thing-"

"That is how you got here," replied the guard. 

"The Proctor said _nothing_ about coffers," Rodney insisted. The Guard moved quick and tapped Rodney with the innocuous looking baton he carried. It lit up in green like the lights on the wall and Rodney dropped like he'd had a seizure. Ronon moved at the guard and the one close to him took him down the same way. Sheppard backed off quick, arms out to the limit of the chain to keep Hart and Rodney behind him and himself between them and the guard.

"Got it! We got it!" 

Rodney McKay stayed very quiet the rest of the night but he was alright. How much of that was pain, fear, or stubborn insistence that he could handle it if Ronon could handle it, that was anybody's guess. They sat against a hard, cold wall, all night, with the straps at their necks chain-locked to the rock behind them. But once they were locked up, everyone got fed. Some kind of bread and some kind of broth with random flecks of what Sheppard hoped was edible meat. It didn't taste lemony, so Rodney tried it and declared it passable but had no further complaint. Whatever had hit him from that alien baton _sucked_ , but it could apparently work miracles the cooks back home would have killed for.

John took stock of what his ragtag team had between them, which on this mission was his and Ronon's ability to fight, Rodney’s PowerBars probably melted in his pocket, and Hart's ability to guess at what alien poison ivy looked like if they ever had a chance to make a break back to the 'gate. They didn't have much of anything else, aside from boots and jackets that they could only use as blankets against the cold. And damned if it wasn't cold in the tiny cave, which left Rodney chattering out his _I Told You So_ eventually. Sheppard crowded as close to Hart as the chain would let him, and dragged Rodney along with him. Ronon didn't have his jacket anymore, lost it when the rest of them lost their packs, so he sandwiched the botanist from the other side, and the team got cozy, shoulder to shoulder on the wall.

Rodney started yawning uncontrollably about a half an hour after the food was gone, about the time the wooden bowls and spoons were collected by the guards. The green lights powered down by half after that, but Sheppard could still see fine and he wondered idly if they could tweak the color of the lights in Atlantis, save some power by changing the color frequency. 

"Sheppard," Ronon said, voice pitched quiet. John looked over Hart's head at his second. 

"Yeah," he replied, just reporting in. At least they had three-quarters of the team; but getting home would have been easier if Teyla was there. John stifled a yawn, which nearly triggered one from Dex. The man scowled at him for it.

"I wasn't tired until I ate," Ronon said. Sheppard sat up and tried to check in with himself on that. Rodney had slouched a little and had been nearly half out until Ronon had said something, then his breathing sped up. 

"Oh, not again," he groaned, and John _shh'd_ at him out of habit.

"There was a bitter spice in the soup," Hart pointed out. She caught on quick enough. "Probably some kind of herbal anesthetic. Makes sense."

There was another wrinkle in the plan of a timely trip home. Around them, the others in the cave were making sounds that were probably the onset of sleep. 

"Peachy," muttered Sheppard. He tried pulling at the leather at his wrists, testing if he could try to bite through it. The leather tasted noxious and he backed off, spitting it off his tongue. He looked over at Ronon. "Hey buddy..."

The Satedan glanced over at him, definitely drowsy. "What?"

"You know those _sharp things_ you-" but John broke off as Ronon shook his head. 

"In my jacket, maybe," he said. "They found the others."

_Damn_. Sheppard slumped back against the wall again. "So we see what we can find out tomorrow then."

"I hate this planet already," muttered Rodney. " _And_ the _last one_ we were on."

"Agreed," said Sheppard and Ronon in reply. Hart sniffled into her rumpled jacket and mumbled her hundredth apology of the day. Nothing about it was her fault, and they had covered that ground plenty enough that John figured it was about on par with arguing with Rodney’s paranoia. Maybe it was a scientist thing. Before John could say anything about it, though, Ronon shifted just enough to hug the young woman to him. There were a few more sniffles before Hart was asleep. Ronon wasn't far behind her. 

Sheppard struggled to stay awake, waiting for the panic mode he knew Rodney would fall into before long. Rodney had his patterns when things went sideways, and once he got through the worry and the fear, he was fine. He worked well on adrenaline, like the rest of them, and it didn't take much to get him past the scary stuff. But that only worked if Sheppard was conscious for it.

"Go to sleep, McKay," he ordered quietly.

"No," Rodney replied, his volume stubbornly set to match John's. Even still, the tone said the refusal was scientist-speak for _screw you_.

"I'm gonna sleep it off," John warned. Rodney stared at the wall across from them, maybe no more than ten feet, like he expected it to start inching closer. He blinked a few times, yawned, and then kicked at the dirt, fighting the drag of sleep. Then, because there wasn't enough give in the chain to let him actually get comfortable, he pulled his knees up and turned toward John, claiming his shoulder as a pillow instead of a space-heater. With Hart taken care of by Ronon, John slouched toward Rodney, at least a little warmer if not necessarily comfortable. 

*~*~*

Sleep happened, but it wasn't worth much. The headache from the stench in the cave had backed off as John got used to it while he was passed out, but that was the only improvement. Rodney forgot he was afraid of the guard batons and was back to complaining, about the damp and the morning cold and the smell and the things around their necks. He shut up when they brought breakfast, more of the broth stuff. It didn't have the same spicy flavor to it though, so it probably wasn't going to put them to sleep. Especially not if they were supposed to work. Rodney complained about needing the bathroom shortly thereafter. How the hell any of them would survive McKay getting stuck with manual labor, John didn't know.

Things started going sideways on Sheppard after the bowls were collected again. One guard collected the bowls in a big net bag, while two others went through and randomly removed people from the line on the wall. Six prisoners were marched through, and then the guards came back for Ronon. Sheppard sat away from the wall, paying alert attention.

"What’s going on?" he asked. 

"They need a crew in the quarry," one of the guards replied. 

"So that's what this is? What, digging up _rocks_?" Rodney asked. 

"No, your group will be in the mines, later," came the answer, and that didn't make Sheppard feel any better. Ronon gave a slight shrug and a nod when John met his eyes. He had it handled then. That left Hart and McKay to Sheppard on his own. _Great_.

It was probably about ten minutes before they came for the next group. Sheppard and McKay were pulled off the line for that. Hart was left where she sat, still stuck to the wall without them, and that wasn't acceptable. John planted his boots and waited.

"I should go with them," the botanist said, standing up. The guard scoffed and shook his head.

"You lot don't shut up, do you?" he observed.

"No," said Rodney, as John offered up a "Nope."

The guards pushed Sheppard toward the front door at the end of the cave. "Your group is last. Kitchens," one of them said to Hart.

The kitchens didn't sound so bad. And having Hart working there might mean not getting drugged at dinner. So Sheppard kept moving. Their group was sent to the restroom building again, then lined up along the rock wall between caves to wait for the cart to take them somewhere. That was annoying, just because John wanted the two missing members of his team with him before he made it outside the high stone walls again. 

While they stood there, the kitchen crew was brought out, not all ten of them women, but mostly. The two who weren't female were kids, still scrawny. The women all wore their hair in braids long enough to wrap around and pin flat to their heads, even though it was messy from their living conditions. And then there was Hart in her SGC hat with her hair all but invisible aside from a flare of white-yellow around the back. John shook his head, angry at the Proctor all over again 

One of the guards shoved a kid and he stumbled, tripping into one of the women, who flailed and nearly fell. She stopped against Hart, knocking her hat off her head, but at least neither of them fell. The botanist got the woman standing upright and then went back after her hat. Sheppard thought maybe the reaction was because the women had stepped out of line, but suddenly the guards who had escorted the kitchen help out were advancing on Hart.

"Hey!" Sheppard shouted, even as Rodney tried to call his attention to the scuffle with an alarmed, "Colonel-"

The guards on their group closed in on Sheppard then and he backed off, hands up. He mostly looked past the men to track Hart as she was dragged away from the group, and the others were double-timed to the kitchen somewhere down the hill, off behind the prisoner's sorting area. Hart was pushed to her knees, arms way up, in the middle of the square as one of the guards called for the marshal. 

"What’s going on?" Sheppard demanded. "She came with me! What's-"

He got tapped with the baton and felt his spine threaten to snap, so it was plenty of incentive to back off. He staggered to his knees instead, trying not to break anything as the pain rolled through. By the time he could consciously control his movements again, however, he was being dragged up by a pair of guards. They didn't so much care to get him to his feet as they wanted him locked against the rocks. The collar at his neck was locked to chains again and he was left to stand on his own. A man in a dusty suit jacket walked up to stand in front of him.

"Who are you?" the man demanded. 

"Who the hell are you?" Sheppard returned, well on his way back to angry. His neck kept twitching from whatever the baton did, and the weight of the chain at the leather strap wasn’t helping. "Aside from the asshole who kidnapped my team against the Proctor's orders."

It was a gamble, but Sheppard was pissed off. He would tug at strings until he found one that was loose.

"You are from the Proctor?" the man asked, eyes narrowed. 

"No, we're not from your planet, and when the Proctor ordered us sent home, we ended up here instead," John replied.

"Then why are you with fallen Daturan Elite?" 

The man had too many questions. He had to be the marshal the guards had been shouting for. John looked to where Hart still sat in the middle of the cleared prisoner area. The woman was shaking but she hadn't been hurt.

"I just told you, we're not _from_ Datura. We're from Atlantis, from the Ancients," Sheppard said, bluffing again. _God_ , but he hoped Hart had the gene if they called his bluff. The marshal pointed back at Hart. 

"She is one of them. We can see it on her hair and in her eyes. And you said the Proctor sent you, which proves it," said the marshal.

"She's a _botanist_! She plays with _flowers_ for a living! What the hell are you worried about?" Rodney blurted. Guilt by association had him locked to the rocks, too. The marshal looked between the two of them, obviously not understanding simple English. He had an accent. Maybe he wasn’t Daturan, but he was at least Tau’ri. 

"Look, whatever the problem is, I've got a simple solution for you," said Sheppard, jaw clenched to force himself not to react to the treatment. "You don't want her here, we don't want to be here. Just let my team walk out. We'll get ourselves to the 'gate-"

" _Monument_ ," corrected Rodney hastily.

"-Monument, and then you'll never see her or us again. Alright? Sounds good to me."

The marshal didn't seem to approve of Sheppard's plan. 

"Your Proctor sends _spies_ and you expect us to let you go back?" asked the marshal.

"We're not-" but Rodney's protest cut quiet at a hard look from John. They were fighting an uphill battle; nobody ever believed the spy who insisted they weren't one.

"I am Lt. Colonel Sheppard. My team traveled to Datura from Atlantis. We met the Proctor _one time_ and he kicked us out. Alright? Now I get you people don't like short hair, but her hair will _grow_ _back_..."

But John couldn't _will_ this one into their brains. The marshal backed off, unsettled and angry, and left still growling about spies. The guards left near them shoved John back toward the rocks a step because he was at the limits of the stretch of the chain, like that made him some kind of threat.

By then, the cart had shown up, and the group Sheppard and McKay had been brought out with was loaded up. It was hard not to notice that they weren’t on it. _Shitshitshit_.

Sheppard watched as the marshal moved across the square and met up with other men dressed casual and clean, like him. There were two sets of uniforms worn by the guards Sheppard had seen so far; the cream and silver light colored uniforms of the Daturan guards that had brought them to this planet and kept watch on the big stone doors that went in and out of the camp, and the brown and black, homespun uniforms that moved people in and out of the different caves. And now these guys in soft, brown, collared suit jackets and loafers, so very out of place in a prison camp. There was some kind of politics at work. Different factions of bad guys. _Great_.

They were too far away, but John strained to hear their whispered conversation anyway. He couldn't even read their lips since two out of the three had their backs to him. Hart could hear them, though, and the botanist had gone ashen. She put her arms down and nobody seemed to notice. Sheppard didn’t know the woman well enough to guess if it was a good or bad sign to how she was doing.

His answer came a moment later when the botanist jumped to her feet and made a break for the gates out to the road.

"Hart! No!" Sheppard forgot about the restraints at his neck and started to move after her but McKay pulled him back, hard, as the guards around them closed ranks and their strange weapons audibly charged. Sheppard looked past them in time to see Hart fall to the packed dirt road. He saw red blooming out from the back of her shirt and another from her slacks that was quickly puddling on the dirt. 

Something snapped and John rushed at the guards again, this time stopping on his own just to point them toward the woman dying thirty yards away. "Somebody help her! Get a medic!" he shouted in their faces. The guards backed off to the limits of the restraints rather than risk Sheppard surprising them. 

"Colonel-" McKay tried but John turned a hard look at him.

" _You_ stay back," he ordered. McKay looked from Sheppard to the guards and took two steps back to the wall. Then the Lt. Colonel went back to dealing with the brown-suited guards in front of him, and he used their distraction with McKay, _and_ the useful two feet of chain between his wrists, to knock their heads and steal a baton. It did absolutely no good for any long-term prospects of health, but _damn_ did it feel good to send two of them down from their own weapon. It kept them at a wider circle and away from Sheppard and McKay both.

It lasted until one of the other guards clipped the edge of their lit-up baton against the chain going to the cuff at John's neck. Whatever the green energy was, it transferred along the line and zapped right against his spine, knocking him flat. Moving in general wasn't happening after that and John stared at a hazy blue-purple sky, in a crushing amount of pain as everything remotely attached to his spine radiated tiny spasms like aftershocks right up into his brain. _Fuck that hurt_.

The marshal came and stood over him, took a knee to check his pulse and make sure Sheppard was still alive. 

"Get her a medic," Sheppard managed, teeth chattering a little from the effort.

"No. She's dead," said the marshal, just fine with the outcome. "I do not tolerate spies in my camps, Sheppard."

"Not a spy," Sheppard replied. 

"No, you do not look the part. But you provided cover and aid. So now, you work. Your men work. Or you bleed in the street. It's that simple," the marshal told him. Like he was looking forward to the promise. John wanted to at least earn the threat, but basic motor control was not great yet and strength was out of the question. 

The marshal stared down at him, narrow-eyed and assessing. Then he caught the collar of Sheppard's shirt to move it out of the way to pluck at the silver chain of the dogtags. About the time he got to the tags themselves, Sheppard had managed to get his hand to listen and snatched at the man's wrist, held tight to keep him from breaking the necklace. The marshal read the tags before prying John's fingers loose and tucking the tags back where he found them. Then he patted him on the face and stood up.

"You stay out of the way today, Sheppard," the marshal said. He snapped fingers in Rodney's direction. "Collect your friend."

John had at least managed to roll to his side before Rodney was at him. He felt nauseous and needed to puke but it passed by the time he made it to his knees. McKay didn't let him shrug him off, and he moved him back against the rock wall, _out of the way_. The marshal and the guards dispersed, and Sheppard saw that no one had gone anywhere near Hart at all. 

Just as Rodney sank back down to sit next to him, Sheppard made it up to his knees and then his feet and moved as far away as the chain would let him get, nearly six feet at least, so he could be sick. Then he went back, sat stiffly beside Rodney, and tried to wrap his head around the new game.

"Don't do anything stupid like that again," Rodney said after a few minutes. His eyes kept doing the same thing John's did, moving to see Hart was still there, then dodging away. John shrugged and Rodney grabbed his forearm as though he could threaten him for it.

"Oh, I will," Sheppard promised.

*~*~*


	5. Chapter 5

It turned out, the batons were the Daturan weapon of choice because they could _zap_ up close, or they could get some range. The batons had killed Hart. Rodney had a lot more respect for them after that. The Colonel, on the other hand, knew how to disarm them because it was just another _stick_. He had been training for two years with Teyla on the Bantos sticks, and months with Ronon, so getting his fool-self killed by the Daturan guard would just be the next level up. Whenever a guard came near him without a bowl of food in exchange, Sheppard was on his feet and ready to try again. 

It backfired on them. When Ronon's group was brought back hours later, he saw them still sitting along the wall outside, and he saw Hart's body a stone's throw away, and the big, sweaty oaf did exactly the same thing Sheppard had done, with exactly the same results. Rodney understood, certainly, and he was angry to the point of being ill, but he also noted that there were now three of them on the wall, and the suns were going down. After all day baking in the direct heat, _cold_ was a problem, and one he thought they should be more concerned about. 

The guards finally took Hart's body away and Ronon at least stopped pacing at the length of the chain. Sheppard still leaned against the rock wall, standing over Rodney obnoxiously, and glowered at anyone who got near them. The guards sent food over by way of another prisoner and Sheppard and Dex allowed it. It was some sort of trustee or something who wasn't kept locked up. The kid came back later, well after dark, to collect their bowls, bringing with them what smelled like horse blankets. Rodney gagged and coughed as he was forced to use the gross and unsanitary source of heat. He smacked whatever part of Sheppard he could reach in retaliation for the man's poor choices.

"I will die of hypothermia, smelling like a _barn_ ," he said.

"Yeah, well, you're not _already_ dead," replied Ronon darkly. That was enough to ground Rodney’s complaining about potential death for a few days. 

They had plenty of room to pile together against the cold and Rodney suffered through it. The guards let them off the wall in the morning and they were allowed to use the facilities. But John went after a guard’s baton again afterward, and they all three went right back to the wall. Ronon was fine to back the idiocy, but Rodney wanted to know what the hell they were doing. Sheppard shrugged and picked at a hole he had torn in the knee of his pants. 

"I'm thinking I want to know what goes on in this place. And I can’t do that stuck in a cave," he replied. "You've got some PowerBars. We can starve a day if we have to. We can't get around their routine to get out of here if we don't know it."

Rodney groaned and sagged back against the wall as he saw the logic that mandated he suffer in order to gain. He lived on PowerBars that day, and only had to sacrifice one each to Ronon and John because they were stubborn and stupid. It rained that night, and didn't turn into snow, so that was a small relief. And so Rodney got to bury himself under a soaking wet, smelly horse blanket for a second night in a row to keep the cold-but-not-freezing air off of him, stuck between Dex and Sheppard, with all of them starting to smell as ripe as the blanket. They had a plan. It would work. There would be a payoff in the end.

Except there wasn't. 

Breakfast was provided, cold and spicy, that third morning. The herbal anesthetic kicked in a lot stronger. They probably should have expected it. Sheppard was too groggy after an hour to go after the batons that got within reach. All three of them - thankfully - were loaded in the cart and hauled away. They had the whole cart to themselves and found separate corners to nap in, rather than yell at each other as the plan dissolved under them. Rodney got a general heading direction and tried to look for landmarks, but he was loopy from the drugged food and wasn't certain he stayed awake the whole trip. 

It was midday when they were kicked out of the cart, which meant it could have been as much as fifteen or more miles further from the 'gate. Worst case scenario, anyway. They were shoved in a long, low-ceilinged, concrete room, not a cave this time, and Rodney passed out to sleep off the last of the drugs. 

After the move, Sheppard and Ronon came to the conclusion that it was better to play the game than to risk being moved any further from the 'gate. It would have been nice if they had come to that conclusion when they were only a few miles walk from the 'gate instead of a few _days_ from it, but they tolerated Rodney pointing that out about as well as they listened to anything else he said.

“Just... don’t, Mer,” was all Sheppard had to say about it. Rodney accepted the nickname because he was used to the slip ups now, and he didn’t care what people called him on a planet he didn’t want to be on. 

He had figured out there was a pattern to it, too. Sheppard only dropped into the family nickname when he wasn’t thinking, wasn’t fully present in wherever they were. It was somewhere he went when he needed a break. He was slipping, bruised and exhausted instead of energized by the adrenaline after three days on the wrong planet, on the wrong side of fights, the wrong side of the guns, on no sleep. He didn’t bounce back from the baton strikes as fast as Ronon. And his angry reminders to stay positive had disappeared. And that’s when Sheppard _defaulted_ to using a name he knew was from family. Just like he defaulted to being in Rodney’s space, at his shoulder or behind him. 

Rodney defaulted to insults and anger when he was cornered. He didn’t know exactly what to make of Sheppard so randomly doing the opposite. But he knew, surrounded by nothing at all familiar or friendly as they were now, he was comforted by it. It was grounding. 

The thing with the Daturan’s whole prison-planet set-up was that they had actual _hundreds_ of people working the different camps that Rodney had seen so far. And they gave them axes and picks and tools that they could easily use to kill their guards. Sheppard’s face said he thought about it every time he picked up the shovel on the way into the mine. 

Rodney’s face probably said something along the lines of _Why haven't we left yet?_ But he stopped asking that question after a few days because he hadn’t figured out how to hack something that didn’t have a computer. Ronon and Sheppard were working on something. They talked to the other prisoners more and made Rodney swear to not ever yell at the others; they weren’t in Rodney’s lab, and he would get his ass kicked. And it must have been worthwhile, because neither of them complained anymore when Ronon was dragged off to the quarry.

"This means you have a plan, right?" Rodney asked as they sat on their new wall, outside the tall mine with the multiple stories of trails and metal scaffolding and weird, glowing yellow lights. (Rodney had broken one once, "accidentally" of course, and hadn't been able to figure out what kind of power source they were dealing with.) The prisoner-storage area was located much closer to the mine than at the first camp. Their first camp had apparently been bigger than they had known, according to what the other prisoners had to say, and prisoners were buried in caves all around it. At this new _Focia_ camp, they were in short, cement rows of buildings that Rodney somehow preferred to the unknown of the caves. He could see the end of every row, could practically take his own headcount every day if he was bored enough.

"Whispering campaign to keep the rumor mill going," said Sheppard. "Somebody else already started it. We're just feeding it. Seeing if it pays off."

“What- how does that-” Rodney broke off, face scrunched in annoyance as John winced and _shh_ ’d at him again.

“Well, it turns out, these angry folks, with all their ideas toward the bad guys, never once thought about _unionizing_ , with their superior numbers and all,” said Sheppard. And the shovels, picks, and other tools didn’t hurt either. 

“Anything I can- you know, help with?” Rodney asked. Sheppard shook his head. 

“Stay away from it,” he advised. Rodney nodded his approval and left it alone after that.

It was the next day that Rodney worried that maybe Sheppard was losing it. 

Ronon had been sent to the quarry, somewhere Rodney and John had still never seen, and it didn't sit well with the rest of his team. But they disappeared into the mine without him, and Sheppard had taken up the pick he had been given while Rodney was assigned the task of helping to haul carts and moving things the old fashioned way. 

There were a hundred different ideas Rodney could have presented to anyone who would listen that were better than the system they had in place. But he didn’t. So Rodney had to regularly help another prisoner shove and wrestle a hard-wheeled cart up to the surface, from where the precious minerals were being chipped from the rock and the dirt, either the chunks of useless rock that could eventually be useful, or the actual shining, quartz-like stones that the Daturans were digging for. 

The mine was decades old and huge, wide and open with tall pillars supporting the rock ceiling over their heads as the crews slowly dug the slope into the ground. Everything was sloped, which was preferable to stairs, but still made for hard work with a two-hundred pound cart to push and pull, especially when fighting the limitation of the chain between their wrists. Rodney was done at the end of every day, hurt everywhere, and the herbal mix was just overkill. It probably had some other blend of things, like an anti inflammatory, because he felt like he should hurt a lot more than he did.

Rodney’s two-man team was slower than they were supposed to be trudging back down into the mine with the cart because they got hung up in an argument at the unload point. And they were both tired and neither one of them cared if they got hit with a baton and couldn’t move for an hour. They didn’t piss any of the guards off that much, but they did hang around a bit more than they should have getting fresh water to drink. 

When they got back into the mine, the empty cart rumbling toward the refill station, Rodney found Sheppard standing still and holding a pick well up over his head, lodged into the wall. It looked like he was having a hard time breathing, like maybe he was resting. But he stayed there as Rodney approached, didn’t move a muscle, his hands locked around the handle. Rodney abandoned his post at the cart and called over to him, quiet because of the echoing nature of the annoying cavern. “Colonel?”

There was no response, just the wheeze and stillness. Rodney hurried over and took the heavy tool away from his hands to remove the risk of him dropping it on their heads. Sheppard was obviously exhausted. Nobody stood with a pick over their head while barely hanging on to it. But as the pick dislodged from the wall and Rodney carefully dropped it down, Sheppard swayed and tipped and didn’t catch himself.

Rodney tossed the pick away and caught Sheppard’s arm to try to keep him on his feet. He just barely avoided the man taking them both down and it was all he could do to make sure Sheppard didn’t hurt himself as he hit the ground. The Colonel startled when he snapped out of it, with Rodney crouched over him, catching his hands before Sheppard hit him, and trying to get his attention.

“Col- Sheppard! It’s me!” he said sharply, barely balanced as he held the man’s wrists out of a sense of self-preservation. Recognition dawned as Sheppard gulped in air. 

“What the hell-”

“You nearly dropped a pick on your head, Colonel! What happened?” Rodney demanded. John blinked up at him.

“Well, I guess _that_ happened,” was his only reply. He shook his head and looked lost for a moment. Then he shoved at Rodney’s hold on his wrists and tried to sit up, the pair of them coming suddenly face to face as he moved before Rodney had fully regained his balance. Rodney turned a knee and dropped down beside his friend, scowling at him as he now had to contemplate standing up again. Once Rodney was sitting, he preferred to stay that way and his knees were killing him. He never got an answer to what had happened. But he sent Sheppard up with the next truckload to get water anyway. 

*~*~*

It took days of patience, piggybacking off the prisoners' own natural exhaustion at their lives, or what had become of them, but John had worked his way in with the prisoners enough to figure out that there had been a shift among the worker bees. It had only taken a few public fights with the marshals and friendly words to their fellow workers to get the prisoners to talk around him, even to him. 

Most of the prisoners were Daturan people, lower class, easy targets. And they had been branded and marked as thieves and murderers, some of them literally. Any "immoral” character of some sort was enough to disappear through the 'gate. Nobody knew where they even were, just that they ended up on a prison planet far from home, working in a mine the local marshals called Focia, at the demand of Daturan asshole guards. 

The marshals and their men were native to the planet, but they had some kind of a deal worked with the Daturans. Given the drastic technological differences between the two places, John bet that deal had something to do with the Wraith. He kept waiting to hear the whine of the Darts come blazing through the skies over the camp. So far he hadn't. But nobody would talk about the Wraith. They didn't seem to know what they were. 

The prisoners all seemed to know they hated the guards and the batons and the labor, though. They were at least an entire city's worth of people stuck in prisons spread across an entire continent. There were just a few miles between camps. And the Daturan guards’ only backup was on another planet. Once they separated the camps from the ‘gate, the guards were outnumbered. Simple. In theory. Now that the camps were all coordinating and of one mind about it, they just had to figure out how to get started.

John sat at the wall, stuck between Ronon and Rodney, waiting for the SleepyTime Soup to kick in. The guards had never taken anything from their pants pockets, so he had his lighter out and toyed at burning the leather of one of the cuffs that kept him chained to the wall. It worked to burn the outside of the cuff, but it never seemed to break through the... _skin_. It was some kind of a living beast that had attached itself to him, and it was eating away at his skin with some kind of rash, so Sheppard was determined to fight back. They couldn't cut the cuffs with an axe blade, and the fire had never worked before, but the fire could at least make headway. And revenge was revenge. That worked out _great_.

Except when McKay reached over, snapped the lid closed, and took the fire away. _Then_ it didn't work. The progress he had been making burning the outer layer of the cuffs quickly disappeared as it healed back to the usual light brown suede color. Sheppard turned an annoyed glare on the man and Rodney huffed at him, bundled up under his ruined jacket.

"Don't fall asleep playing with fire," he ordered. "There's no windows. We're stuck to a wall. We all die. From the smoke if not the fire."

Sheppard snatched his lighter back and shoved it in his pocket. "I'm not going to catch myself on fire, _Mom_."

"No, a much better plan would be to start with the marshal's house," said Rodney, in the voice that said he would approve of the plan. Sheppard nodded idly. He was suddenly distracted. 

"McKay. If the 'gates can survive space... can a 'gate survive a fire?" he asked. Rodney blinked at him in the weird artificial lightning. Ronon leaned forward a little to see the answer, too.

"Well. Yes," said Rodney. 

"Like a wildfire?"

He nodded again. Sheppard looked to Ronon. "See if you can get that to the quarry. That's how they do it."

Rodney frowned at them for it. "Do what-"

"That thing I told you to stay away from," replied Sheppard. And he meant it, too. He wanted Rodney nowhere near it. If it all blew up in their faces, McKay was their only shot at a Hail Mary, which meant he had to stay out of it, steer clear, and sound convincing when the marshal came yelling.

Rodney glared at him for the dismissal and Sheppard couldn't explain any of it. Instead he offered a drowsy, charming smile and tried, "Please?"

It didn't make Rodney any happier with the answer, but he scowled and pulled his knees up, curled against his side into the wall, and put his back to John. Going to sleep was a thoroughly acceptable answer, and John pulled him back a little to make sure he kept the close proximity of his two stinky, human-shaped space heaters. Not even minutes later, he was asleep before Rodney.

*~*~*

It took a few days to get the message circulated between the camps. But eventually, the prisoners made their move. The trustees set the fires outside the stone walls surrounding the camp and then disappeared. There were similar ancient stone walls around every camp, and the fires mostly stayed on the outside. Except when someone lit the marshal's house on fire. The smoke darkened the sky as acres burned around them. And when they saw the smoke, every able-bodied prisoner took their axes and shovels and turned on their captors. John and Ronon stole five batons in a few minutes, which they immediately shared with others. Very quickly, someone had blasted their way into the armory that the guards had been trying to protect. It was all over from there.

It was really just a matter of numbers. The guards only worked with small groups at a time because it was all they had the manpower for. So when the three hundred workers split the fifty guards' attention between a fight and a wildfire blocking their only means of escape, the riot didn't take long to get going. Nobody really knew how to use the super-powered batons they had stolen, accidents happened, but mostly guards were killed. Bloodied uniforms littered the open square in front of the mine entrance. After sometimes years of doing hard labor for whatever their offenses, the Daturan prisoners had no problems killing. If the guards had wanted humane treatment when the tide turned, they should have provided it before things got that far. 

Angry prisoners raided everything, from the guard barracks to the kitchen, so when the fighting started, Sheppard steered his team to the kitchens. They had a few days' walk to make it to the 'gate and were going to need supplies. They got water and stuff that looked edible, and soaked towels in water to use as face masks against the smoke. The purple sky had turned black and red as the fires outside the stone walls burned through green grassland and wild forests that hadn't been cleaned up in a hundred years, with dead trunks and branches and strangling vines. In hindsight, Hart probably wouldn't have appreciated Sheppard’s solution to blocking the camps off from their source of backup assistance. 

With their supplies looted, they found an empty storage cave and waited. The little revolution wasn’t theirs, they had just fanned the spark to get it going. And they still had miles to clear before the 'gate. The smoke was everywhere and the fire would be too close to the road to walk out in without cover. There was no way to outrun fire and Sheppard wasn't stupid enough to try it, on any planet. He hadn’t survived the last week and a half of power-tripping guards and dirty prisoners just to get pinned down by fire. His team could wait a few hours.

When the smoke let up, it had been a few hours of waiting in the dark. The sky was still covered, but the road had cleared as the fires moved further out, completely unchecked. The air at the road level was breathable, but if the road took any change in elevation or got down into a gully, they might run into trouble. The camp had cleared out a lot already, the less inclined to violence taking their chance on the fire rather than wait for the guards to rally. Some of them could have hidden away, just like John's team had, and it made waiting a dangerous proposition on its own. So they eventually decided to chance the road. 

The road was covered in white-gray ash like a layer of snow, and it still fell from the sky as the fire slowly climbed up trees. Breathing hurt from the smells, and given the herbal treatments the camp preferred, who knew how many of the burning plants were actually dangerous. Sheppard spent a lot of time coughing and squinting, having much more trouble with the smoke than even Rodney. Not that Rodney was fragile, but Sheppard was frustrated by the fact that he was compromised and the guy with an _allergy_ to _lemons_ was fine. 

They stuck to the road and kept walking after dark. They ran into other prisoners a few times, but nobody was interested in bothering each other once they realized they weren’t dealing with Daturan guards or local keepers. Ronon still carried the one baton they hadn’t given away just in case, though. It was an eerie, odd-colored hellscape, with fire burning low as it climbed in the undergrowth and along the random branch overhead, sometimes burning different colors as it interacted with the different chemicals in the planet’s flora. 

Sheppard was actually thankful his clothes had been torn to shit working in the mine over the last week because everything was way too hot for shirts that didn’t have built-in air-vents. It kept them to the road, despite the risks, because otherwise it meant running ankle-deep into fire embers if they weren’t careful. _Everything_ on this planet burned. _Oops_.

Between the smoke and the suns going down, and simple exhaustion, they finally had to consider stopping. Rodney insisted that he couldn’t see, and after the third time he tripped, John finally had to believe him before he damaged something. They wouldn’t have been happy to carry him back to the ‘gate. But they couldn’t exactly sleep on the road, and once they got to the burned out grasslands and there were no longer trees overhead raining ash down on them, the ground was still hot and burning even if they couldn’t see fire. They kept on until the road got close to the hills again, just moved slower. The stony ground around the hills provided cover, burn-free zones that hadn’t caught and the fire had moved around completely. 

The problem was, of course, others had the same idea, so when they did find a safe place to rest, it already had people sitting around. Some genius had started a fire-pit to cook food, too. Rodney started to go off about the idiocy but John ordered him to knock it off before he started trouble they were all too tired for. Instead, they approached single file, Sheppard in the lead with his hands out to show he was friendly, and Rodney and Ronon behind him.

“There room for three more?” Sheppard called out. “Just until daylight.”

Two men stood up, gruff and ready to brawl, and John waved his hands to reinforce what he had thought was a universal meaning of harmlessness. They were hardly harmless, but they didn’t mean any trouble in this case, anyway. 

“Who are you?” one of the men demanded. Nobody was waving any batons around, so things were looking good so far.

“The Lanteans,” Sheppard reported. “Been here a week or so now. Helped with the mine at Focia.”

“Focia? Under Marshal Trall?” asked one of the men.

“Damned if I knew the bastard’s name, just know he and I didn’t get along too good,” replied Sheppard easily. If they were guards, the batons would have been lit up by now. It wasn’t like the men could miss noticing the chains between their wrists. There was still no sign of the weapons in the dark, other than the one Ronon had strung from his belt. There was some grumbling at the fire-pit before everyone nodded agreement. 

“Thanks,” Sheppard said, then moved off away from the fire toward the relative safety of the stone-covered hillside some fifty feet away from the group. He could still smell the bones of whatever they had cooked, and he was hungry, but damned if he was going to announce they had stolen supplies from the camp to strangers. He led the way to show Rodney where he was going and help make sure the scientist didn’t fall again. They ended up against another wall and had to make some kind of comfortable seat out of stone and dirt and their jackets. It was still unnaturally warm, what with everything around them _on fire_ to one degree or another, and they each found their own space to relax how they could until daylight. 

“When we get back, you should have Beckett check your vision,” Sheppard told Rodney, an honest suggestion however borne out of annoyance it may have been. Rodney scowled at him but stuffed his jacket into a makeshift pillow and curled up against the wall, lying down completely horizontal for the first time in over a week. Seconds later he was complaining about his back, but not enough to sit up. John shook his head and settled in to take first watch. 

*~*~*

Somewhere after the firepit had been extinguished but still well before daylight, Rodney’s bladder woke him up. It wasn’t like he had really been sleeping much, more like his eyes were closed and he wasn’t thinking, but there had been nothing at all restful about it. He reluctantly climbed up to his feet and looked around for a safe path. 

The sky was still smokey red and dark, and he could see tiny embers still flickering along the ground and up into trees not far away. He stayed out of the embers but stuck close to them, figuring no one would be stupid enough to lay down near them, and made his way out to the road again, looking for at least a modicum of privacy. The red glow of the sky cast everything around him somewhat orange and Rodney was careful of his footing enough to wander off what he felt was still a safe distance. Despite what Sheppard said, he could see fine, but _dark_ was still _dark_.

Rodney saw to his business and then went back to the road. He turned back toward where he had left Sheppard and Dex, and stopped, surprised by something further down the road, lit up and swinging. A shaft of fire, like a torch, was moving, someone was running, toward him along the road. _Multiple_ someones. Rodney retreated to a copse of trees, which, yes, they were on fire, but at least the rocky ground under them wasn’t, so it was safe enough to walk near them. 

Except when there was already someone else in the trees. Someone way too tall and invisible in the surreal shadows cast by burning branches under an orange sky as they stood watching the approach of the travelers on the road. Rodney thought he recognized the fluffy braids of Ronon and relaxed a little. 

“Oh, Dex. It’s you,” he muttered at the big man. “I thought it was-”

“Shut up!” hissed the man, who turned out to definitely not be Ronon. He clapped a big hand over Rodney’s mouth and shoved him away, into one of the trees they had been trying to hide behind. Rodney startled but kept quiet as people ran by on the road, all of them carrying flaming torches. 

It took a moment for the pain to kick in and the intensified heat to make it through his shirt. His shoulder touched the trunk of the tree, shoved into it as the stranger pinned him to it to shut him up. The trees around them had been burned of their branches and leaves already, but the trunks burned outside going in and the charred bark flaked off until fire slowly scorched into Rodney’s shirt and skin. He almost screamed except for the trouble so close by on the road. Instead he reverted to kicking out in an effort to get free and it did a good job of making the man mad. It at least got Rodney away from the tree and he stumbled toward the road.

There was a flash at the same time, green light that was far too familiar, and Rodney ducked over his knees. There was a loud _thud_ as a body hit the dirt near him and Rodney jumped back, nearly falling, and biting his tongue as his shoulder screamed. 

“McKay!” came the quiet admonishment, this time from a voice that _was_ Ronon Dex. The Satedan moved to help him steady himself and then moved them out to the road. “This way.”

He stayed quiet and Rodney accepted the help because his shoulder was probably going to really kill him this time, and his vision was blurring, but he needed to stay quiet so they could stay away from the people on the road...

“What the hell?” demanded Sheppard a moment later, the man also suddenly on the road. “What happened?”

“There were people on the road, he got jumped when he took cover,” said Ronon. John set a hand to his arm, trying to get Rodney to focus on him in the dark. 

“Are you okay?” the Colonel asked.

“Burned my shoulder,” Rodney replied. Sheppard started swearing because they didn’t have any First Aid in the stuff they had stolen from the kitchens. He dug into the bag and found one of the flasks of water. It was the only thing they had until they got home.

“Drink. We’re moving,” John said. 

“It’s too dark,” said Ronon, because the man was reasonable.

“Also, did I mention my shoulder is _on fire_?” added Rodney.

“Yes, to both, and if we wait around for it to get better, it won’t. We can’t see to clean it, and anything we try to do will just waste time,” said Sheppard. “We stop at first light and do what we can then. But you have to stay on your feet or we won’t get you up again.”

Rodney wanted to argue the logic, but he couldn’t think of anything at the moment. “Your idea sucks,” was the best in his arsenal just then, and he knew it was pitiful. His shoulder was on fire so he gave himself a pass. John found himself a branch that _wasn’t_ on fire and wrapped and tied the torn hem of his shirt around the end before he stuck it into something that _was_ on fire and it caught, making himself a rudimentary torch like a caveman. He used it to point them toward the direction he wanted them to follow on the road. Ronon led the way and Sheppard walked behind them, carrying the torch, and sometimes randomly messing with Rodney’s shoulder without warning. It felt like he tugged something away from the burn each time and it stung and intensified the burn.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rodney yelped, because whatever it was Sheppard had done, it hurt badly. 

“Keep walking, McKay,” was the only reply he got. He did a few more of the surprise attacks, earning the same reaction, and giving the same response, before he finally ordered them to stop. He passed the torch off to Ronon and then started digging in the bag they had stolen from the kitchens, pulling out the jacket Rodney had left behind when he stood up to go find a moment of privacy. He tied it at the sleeves and created a poor man’s sling out of it, wrapping Rodney’s wrist in one end and looping the other over his neck.

“Don’t move it, alright? This is the best we can do for now. Don’t move your arm or you might screw up the muscles too much,” Sheppard said. Rodney accepted it with a tired nod. They started walking again. And then it started raining. Because of course it did. The team kept moving miserably along the road toward the first prison camp they had been to. With everything on fire and buried under smoke and ash, that was the only mile marker they would get before they knew for certain they were on the road to the ‘gate.

*~*~*

The only reason Rodney stayed conscious to make it to daylight was the fact that Sheppard kept shoving their food and water supplies at him, and Ronon refused to let his feet stop walking. They let him pass out for a few minutes once the first of the suns started to peek up, so that they could check his shoulder. Whatever they did to it, Rodney would never have to know, because he was unconscious and oblivious. But they definitely did something because it hurt worse when he finally woke up. 

They had stopped a mile short of the sprawling first camp, and when Rodney woke up, he was inside the walls again. They said Ronon had carried him, but that was frankly an insane suggestion because Rodney would have remembered that happening. Neither of them felt like arguing with him about it. Instead they picked their way around dead bodies and raided the kitchen for what was left of it to be raided. Ronon found bread and Sheppard climbed up into an overhead pantry and tossed down virtually anything else he could find. There wasn't a lot, but there was enough to keep them going.

The rain had put out the fires enough that the sky was closer to normal. The dark smoke clouds had been broken up. Presumably the ground was no longer on fire, but Rodney wasn’t inclined to stray off well-packed dirt roads to find out. He stayed away from dead bodies and trees and complained about the fact that his clothes were soaking wet and he was walking in mud. Sheppard made sure he kept up with them, but he was too focused on whatever he was looking for to pay attention to Rodney's voice. He eventually found bolt cutters to get rid of the chains, and suddenly carrying supplies became much easier. Well, for Ronon and John anyway; Rodney was excused from carrying things.

After shooting off the lock on the heavy wood door with the stolen baton weapon, they found their stuff in the dark caves, amid a mountain of other stolen supplies. It was kind of amazing that no one else had raided it yet. Sheppard made Rodney carry the torch - actual _fire_ on a stick, the _bastard_ \- but handed over his canteen and an MRE in trade for it back as they left. Then he and Ronon made Rodney walk to the 'gate. And they kept giving him food and water to keep him quiet. 

They were all a mess of exhaustion and bruises. The day wore on and the suns started their downward arc as the team trudged tiredly homeward. Rodney tried to stay focused like his team was, but his shoulder hurt too much. He actually apologized for it in his rambling litany of verbal abuse against the planet and the people who ran it and the general forces of nature on any planet that would make him walk through toxic rain with an open wound on his back because who knew what kind of chemicals the fire had released into the air from the burning plant-life and the rain had only forced every one of those chemicals into his shoulder and-

"The fires were _our_ fault, not the planet's, McKay," said Sheppard finally. They were coming up on the valley with the 'gate, and he was being overly quiet.

"Don't call me that," snuffed Rodney, annoyed at everything. 

"It's your name, isn't it?" Ronon asked, a surprised laugh on his voice. Rodney fluffed up slightly.

"Well, yes, of course, but that's beside the point," he said, snappish. Sheppard kept quiet for a few steps.

"We'll be home soon, Rodney," he said finally. 

"Good."

And they found a place to get a good sight-line into the stockade around the 'gate not long later. Sheppard and Ronon went down to climb the wall and take potshots at the Daturan guards, leaving Rodney to keep watch. But they didn't see inside from down on the ground, while Rodney saw very clearly that their plans for an easy surprise weren't going to work out as the guards dropped into formation to leave. 

Rodney scrambled over the burned out terrain, tripping as he hit the slope of one section from the wrong angle and he splashed into ashen sand and had to climb painfully back to his feet to get back to the road. He didn't quite make it to the road because of the slow-down and instead just climbed up on a rock to start waving. 

"Hey! Up here!" Rodney waved the hand that wasn't trapped in a jacket-sling and tried to draw the attention of the guards marching out of the wall opening. Sheppard and Ronon crouched behind the gate, sitting ducks with their backs to a stone corner if any of the Daturans bothered to check their six. Rodney made as much noise as he could but it was exhausting. It worked though, and he dived down behind the rocks he had been standing on when the first Daturan shot went into a tree off to his left. Okay, it hadn't been terribly smart of him, and everything hurt twice as badly as he tried to keep his head down and brush ash off his sunburned nose, but it had worked.

The group of soldiers fanned out from the stone-enforced gate in the wall. The things had to be heavy. The technology offered by the Daturan society was fascinating because it was so unexpected, right down to the archaic hinges on a twelve-foot tall stone fence. Rodney was suddenly so frustrated with the last two weeks just for the loss of _knowledge_ because the society was apparently built by calloused, elitist bastards of a level not seen since... well, Rodney had to reassess that because colonialism was a factor and Earth was hardly immune from those dangers. The Ancients certainly had their problems, too. And Rodney had _personally_ exploded a planet and destroyed five-sixths of a solar system, and nearly his _job_ , and it damaged people's faith in his abilities and... _where was he going with this again_? Oh, yeah, he should have stolen some of their lighting systems to see if he could reverse engineer a power source because Atlantis could use the Daturan innovation if it saved on the ZPMs.

Rodney blinked down at the troops that had been marching toward him and found the danger had been eliminated. Ronon had chased a few of the Daturan guards back into the stockade and Sheppard stood at the entrance, waving Rodney down to them. Rodney struggled to his feet again and made for the packed road that provided the more secure route down into the valley around the stargate. The fire had stretched to the walls of the stockade and the burn lines washed out through half the valley, but the rain had been enough to halt the spread and specks of grassland and trees were still untouched behind the walled-off stargate. Rodney was too close to home to risk finding some still-burning hollow spot under a buried branch and ending up more scorched and in pain than he already was. 

He picked his way over the bodies of the guards, wrinkling his nose at the blood. P90s may be their own kind of archaic, but they did a fair amount of damage. He still tugged his arm free of the sling so that he could pick up another few of the Daturan baton weapons with their electric darts, clumsily hugging them in one arm and hoping he didn’t accidentally shoot himself in the foot. He was going to figure them out. Later. At home.

When he got to Sheppard, the Colonel was staring at the overcast sky, intently focused on something, and not breathing. 

"Colonel?" he asked. The weapons were heavier than he thought and Rodney had to juggle them. He was already in pain. It wasn’t going to interfere with his most recent scientific mission. He hugged them and tried again to get Sheppard’s attention. "What? What do you see?"

Suddenly the man was blinking at him and the p90 was lowered like he was too tired to keep holding it. Sheppard shook his head to snap himself out of whatever it was. Rodney scrunched his face at him distastefully. 

"You just did the breathing thing-" he began, intending to remind his friend of the time he nearly dropped an axe on his head a week earlier. Sheppard shook his head again and shoved Rodney toward the stargate.

"I'm fine. Let's close the doors and get the hell out of here, huh?"

Rodney didn't argue and shuffled the baton weapons as he walked so he could start working on the DHD. The only relief offered by the Daturans was that they wouldn't have messed with their own DHD so Rodney wouldn't have to fix it in order to go home. He started the dialing process but had to step back and let Ronon reach for the last few. 

The stargate did its job without a hitch and Rodney was soon staring at a beautiful blue watery wall.

"Command, come in," Sheppard said into his radio mic. There was a lengthy pause and Rodney suddenly remembered he hadn't found his radio. Those weren't easy to come by, damnit. He scowled back at the Daturans outside the stockade. Then Sheppard was talking again and Rodney looked to his friend for the all-clear.

"I've got three to come home, Director. Please."

A moment later John waved them on and took a few steps forward. Then Ronon was at Rodney’s shoulder, taking the baton weapons from him and pushing him through the 'gate. Rodney had never been so glad to step into the gateroom.

*~*~*

~fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-----------------------------------------
> 
> Tahdah! Sorry it was posted so weird, I was trying to do this one without a beta and proofing was taking more work without a safety net. XD
> 
> So yeah, this gets you right into the start of Drafted, which is taking place about a month after the events in the eps Lost Boys and The Hive. Enjoy!
> 
> (now i get to go finish the teen wolf prequel. ohboy.)


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